Review: Calixto Bieito’s Camino Real at Goodman

            Most readers will probably dislike this review of Calixto Bieito’s production of Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real at Chicago’s Goodman Theater for the same reason most viewers of that production (including seasoned reviewers like Hedy Weiss) seemed confused and conflicted about seeing it: it deals with the dark side of the American psyche. (For context: I define dark side as “shadow” in the Jungian sense: that part of human experience that you deny in yourself goes to the part of your psyche that is hidden from you but part of you nonetheless—the shadow.)

            Let’s jump to the most danced-around scene: a graphic depiction of homosexual sex. Why did reviewers and viewers always comment on how hard this scene was to watch in a play during which all sorts of other graphic depictions of the worst of human behavior were also graphically depicted? Why is it harder for Americans to watch a depiction of two men having sex based on possible disparities in power than a man and woman having sex based on a definite disparity of power (as was often depicted here with the prostitute character)? Because homosexuality is perhaps our nation’s most hot-button shadow issue in this era—just look at the debates about it. The fear of homosexuals in public is the fear that there may be a homosexual inside oneself. There are many instances of a campaigner against homosexuality being caught in a homosexual act.

            The scene in the show depicted a White man (Policeman) putting a Black man (Baron de Charlus) into chains and having sex with him. Bieito is certainly not the first to show Whites chaining Blacks to evoke the mistreatment of slaves. The Baron is also clearly portrayed as gay and looking for a tryst. So if the source of viewers’ discomfort is not slavery or consensual sex, what is? The fact that Bieito graphically portrays what we do not want to see about our history and psyche.

            Two facts I know from reading history. (1) White men had sex with Black women in slavery as practiced in the U.S. (2) Male rape has long been a form of insult/punishment, etc. (and still is in many cultures). I knew both of those things and yet never let myself realize that, of course, (1a) White men had sex with Black men in Slavery as practiced in the U.S. This is the essence of the shadow: I could not let myself make that imaginative leap. Yet when Bieito presented it, I immediately recognized the truth in it and was grateful he could help me see it. The revelation of such new truths about the world is certainly a sign of good art. Hedy Weiss lamented that “the blatant pornographic violence more often than not overwhelms the poetry.” Maybe the pornographic violence is the poetry. Unless you define poetry to be as childish as “I think that I shall never see…”

            Viewers and reviewers seemed to think that the world of the play was impossible to imagine, some dreamscape, etc. It is a strange world only in the sense that it is the part of our psyches we never look at (the shadow). The world created in this production reminded me of the works of Terry Gilliam. They are visually stunning and heightened, but they are the logical conclusion of the way in which our lives are lived. In this way, this production of Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real was a satire in the vein of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.”

            Another image had a narrator (an obvious parallel to Tennessee himself) drinking and explaining the play, occasionally popping pills and vomiting. The audience was audibly upset by the retching. But this is the logical outcome of drinking too much and by all accounts, something Tennessee spent many a night doing. Again, the play seems disturbing only to those who have not imagined the logical outcome of Tennessee’s life.

            Charles Isherwood of the New York Times posited that the world of the production “represents the confused outpourings of [Williams],” “perhaps his last dream.” I would counter that it represents everything Williams experienced in all-too-real ways. Williams was a homosexual known for a taste for rough trade. He was an artist off of whom many others (agents, producers, etc.) made money (the nature of an artist). He was an alcoholic and drug user. To then portray rough trade, unbridled greed, and a vomiting drinker in a production of one of his scripts is to recognize his experience.

            Throughout the play the characters call the place the “Cami – No Real.” This not only emphasizes the fact that we are in an imaginary setting (No[t] Real), it is precisely how the many Americans who know no other language would pronounce the title. This is another example of how the play worked for me: as BOTH fantasy and a critique of the reality.

            At one point when the character Kilroy asks the meaning of the place and/or a way out, they distract him with the Carnival. A bevy of lights are turned on at once, blinding the audience. But this is exactly what happens in the U.S. Whenever an honest question is asked, it is immediately undermined by the circus that surrounds the issue as framed by the media. Thus, we question the patriotism of a man who served in combat in Viet Nam versus his opponent who never showed up for the National Guard duty that kept him out of the war.

            The set included at the back a big iron fence that pushed the people behind it way upstage. It was used as a metaphor for many things throughout the play: the border with Mexico, the border between moneyed classes, etc. A fence is emblematic of the U.S. in many ways and again it cannot be blamed merely on the director’s negative view of the U.S. Robert Frost made it an American emblem.

            Bieito is from Spain, and much has been made of his “controversial” productions. His tactics, however, are a generation old or older. Brecht blinded the audience with stage lights in the 1920s. Robert Wilson created hallucinatory images of humans doing absurd things in absurd ways in the 1970s. So if the style was not as controversial or new, then what is? The content. The idea that the U.S. is a morally bankrupt hedonistic empire in decline. The idea is perhaps only new to U.S. citizens.

            I could continue unpacking his many rich images and how they led to my reading of the play, but I will stop here. Ironically, Hedy Weiss wants from the production “redemption”—a particularly strong and persistent American fantasy. If you find it while reading the play on your own, great. But that would be the play as read in the museum of your head. Bieito has made a production of the script that is current to our world and relevant to the culture in which the show ran. The production presented the U.S. culture as it is, not how it is portrayed in the media; not as we might imagine it once was; not how we would like to believe it is (most notably, amnesiac conservatives); not even as we might imagine it could be. The production reflected the U.S. culture as lived by many if not most—only, as I said, tweaked like the films of Terry Gilliam so that the world is at once recognizable yet a vision of what it might be like in the near future.

            The play may have been hard for viewers to watch or reviewers to understand, but the recipe for appreciating the productions is simple (though not easy): read your history, give up your fantasies about your own country, and look hard into your soul.