The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Gregg Ostrin’s Kowalski

By Ross

The framing is pure theatre historic gold, giving us a front-row center vantage point to the day when Tennessee Williams first meets Marlon Brando. It’s a legendary formulation, spilled out in a television interview flashback framing, that draws us into Gregg Ostrin’s new play, Kowalski. And even if it feels a bit forced and fumbled in those first few moments, this new play is a captivatingly playful interaction, rolled out inside epic characterizations, that takes its time to get to the meat of the matter. Still, when the encounter hits its mark, it’s a difficult dynamic to look away from and not want to be a part of.

“Are we on?” asks Tennessee Williams, played with flamboyant effect by Robin Lord Taylor (Fox’s “Gotham“), as he is bathed in a pool of white light. Williams is in the midst of a television interview, and although he would like to be asked about his new play, the interviewer is more interested in a slice of theatre history; the day Williams came into contact with Marlon Brando. And even though, in this particular moment, “the most celebrated playwright in America” indulges the interviewer and the viewers with a sharp turn into his tale. “No, it was not in a theatre,” is boldly states, when he first met Brando. It was in his Provincetown living room and in a way that makes us all lean in more for the next 85 minutes when the lights flicker us back to that infamous evening when two legends lock into one another for domination, when theatre history is made and ignited.

Directed with a strong will for paralleling by Colin Hanlon (George Street Playhouse’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), Kowalski unwraps itself captivatingly before our eyes, manipulating us happily, even with the overly long set-up that playwright Ostrin (A Very Streaming Christmas) has crafted. It’s now thirty years before that interview. 1947. And the playwright Williams has invited his best friend, Margo over to read his new play. The anxiety is real inside the playwright, as Margo, played quite brilliantly by Alison Cimmet (Broadway’s Amélie), showers him with that needed praise over this raw, edgy new play. A sure-fire masterpiece, she says, adoringly, until she finds out that he is bypassing their usual collaboration as playwright/director, for the more celebrated director, Elia Kazan to lead this play onto Broadway. Yet, somehow, they quickly move past the hurt, somewhat abruptly, mainly because that, and his combative relationship to the Kowalski-esque Pancho Rodriquez, played a bit too broadly by Sebastian Treviño (Theatre Now NY’s The Jury), is really not the point we have all gathered together at The Duke on 42nd Street Theatre.

Their pretense roleplaying is simply an appetizer, albeit slightly overcooked and overdone, with a few drunken symbols thrown in for good fun and a sly wink. The meeting of the two monoliths is the entree that we sit eagerly awaiting, as it is in that serving where the fire truly lives, and the meat of the moment is effectively delivered. Kowalski is more of a metaphoric framing than simply a character in a new play by the legendary playwright. It’s the pivotal role in Williams’ newly written play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire‘, and it registers strong throughout the play in meaning and in his energy, even though the part of Stanley Kowalski is not exactly up for grabs when Marlon Brando, portrayed with all the right swagger and force by the very handsome Brandon Flynn (Apple TV’s “Manhunt“), strides purposefully into Tennesse Williams’ Provincetown home, three days late and seemingly without a care in the world. Yet we feel the electricity, even when it flickers, gets fixed, and is duly formulated to metaphoric penny’s perfection.

On a solidly crafted set, designed in detail by David Gallo (August Wilson’s Jitney on Broadway), with solid lighting by Jeff Croiter (Broadway’s Cost of Living), period-perfect-paralleling costuming by Lisa Zinni (Broadway’s Freestyle Love Supreme), and a sharp sound design by Bill Toles (Off-Broadway’s Knock Me A Kiss), the energetic encounter between these two iconic personas is a rollicking reorientation, played out in back-and-forth power grabs that feel as manufactured as the background history that is laid out at our feet by these two. Williams tells Brando from the get-go that he wants the famous film star John Garfield to play the role of Stanley Kowalski on Broadway, but director Kazan has another idea. Kazan gives the young 23-year-old Brando bus fare to Provincetown, sending him into the southern lion’s den with confidence, as he tries to pressure Tennesse Williams to meet with the rising star and let him read for the part. It’s an audition that seems to run off track almost from the moment the young handsome actor walks into the space. Yet we all know the outcome, so the journey through a series of clashes and parallel processing is the meal we are eagerly ready to digest, and as served up, it’s an audacious audition that truly makes us smile.

Whether the tango is true “fact or fiction“, both actors find all the delicious combative flavors that make this clash worth its weight in high dramatic gold, pushing Williams’ southern gentleness up hard against Brando’s more roguish swagger to great effect. The mumble and the politeness wrestle with one another in all its blurred vision of personality observations, and it’s a pleasure to behold, even when the match gets interrupted by Brando’s companion, Jo, played true by Ellie Ricker (A24’s “Y2K“), who’s starstruck fanning of Williams only escalates the untamed fire. But is the play paralleling too much? Or is it a processing that is wisely formed and staged, destined to win out in the end, giving a swagger and a characterization that would make Stella Adler proud? That is the daddy-issue fuel of this ego-driven fire, and it’s drawled out to the greatest effect. Fixing all that is wrong, and rewiring it as he wishes to be seen, heard, and read. I’ll let you be the judge of that, but as framed, the new play hits all the right dance moves, and ends at precisely the right moment after the perfectly delivered line.

Kowalski is now playing at The Duke on 42nd Street running through February 23. Tickets and information: KowalskiOnStage.com