Review: ‘Tennessee Williams UnScripted’ at Theatre Asylum

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Blanche DuBois depended on the kindness of strangers; in “Tennessee Williams UnScripted,” her creator does too. Impro Group is extending its run of improvised plays in the style of the Southern Gothic dramatist. Each performance is a completely different show, sparked by audience members suggesting a month of the year and an animal. Last Saturday at Theatre Asylum, “February” and “polar bear” inspired a fevered saga about two families connected by lust and property. (This is the South, after all.)

Salome (Michele Spears) and Cletis (Brian Lohmann, who also directs) host a “beach picnic” in their greenhouse on a chilly February afternoon for fragile beauty Diane (Jo McGinley) and her ex-con husband, Regis (Stephen Kearin). But it’s a last supper of sorts: While feeding roast chicken to the greenhouse’s carnivorous plants, Cletus announces that their ancestral home is facing foreclosure. Meanwhile, neighboring scion Twitter (Dan O’Connor) romances Salome’s discontented sister (Tracy Burns), fueling the rancor of his Big Daddy, the Rev. Stufflebeam (Floyd Van Buskirk). Sordid revelations, fresh corn bread and lyrical expressions of heartbreak abound.

Christopher Durang’s “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls” definitively proved how susceptible Williams’ overripe world is to parody. But what’s fresh about “UnScripted” is the way it evokes the playwright’s distinctive sensibility without lapsing into easy satire. The best moments — like Diane’s hushed confession that she seeks advice from a painting of a cat named Princess — manage to be simultaneously funny, moving and absolutely in keeping with Williams’ thematics.

McGinley and Kearin were particularly graceful — imagine “Glass Menagerie’s” Laura Wingfield hooking up with Stanley Kowalski’s more reflective brother. As the reticent son who has yet to crawl out from under his father, O’Connor played it blissfully straight, giving the story some actual stakes; he was counterbalanced by the giddy Spears, whose hormonal Southern hostess repeatedly brought down the house.

Toward the end of the second act, the demands of narrative resolution took some of the air out of the improv, and things turned pretty soapy. A minor quibble. Impro Theatre’s considerable agility and its infectious sense of play makes you want to go back again to see what else this group can conjure next out of Williams’ high humidity.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Tennessee Williams UnScripted,” Theatre Asylum, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 31. $20. (800) 838-3006. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.