PicksInSix Review: Kowalski - Brando Beginnings - Lookingglass Theatre Company
Smoldering Performances Bring ‘Kowalski’ To Life.
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy
To get right to the point, the Chicago premiere of “Kowalski” that opened at the Lookingglass Theatre on Saturday night features a tour-de-force performance by Johnny Galecki as Tennessee Williams in a superb play written by Gregg Ostrin and directed by Colin Hanlon. The piece imagines the first meeting between Williams and a young Marlon Brando rendered by the equally compelling Jacob Moskovitz. Galecki, a hometown Chicagoan with numerous stage credits, is best known in films and for his television success on ‘The Big Bang Theory.” You will also recognize Moskovitz in the Amazon Prime series “Elle,” among others.
The play begins in 1977 with Williams ruminating to an unseen interviewer about the meeting with Brando to discuss the role of Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The new play, which followed Williams legendary success on Broadway with “The Glass Menagerie,” was already well along in preproduction, but the pivotal role of Kowalski was yet to be cast. At the urging of director Elia Kazan, Williams agreed to take a meeting with Brando, but, for unknown reasons at the time, Brando did not show.
Picking up in 1947, it is three days later and Williams’ confidant Margo Jones (Alison Cimmet) is reading the “Streetcar” script intently. There is a deep kinship between the two and the dialogue is crisp and saucy. So too is the interplay with his lover Pancho (Reece Dos Santos) who we realize is jaded and at odds with the flamboyant Williams. There is friction and things start to unravel.
Brando arrives shortly after Margo and Pancho depart for an evening on the town, and startles Williams, who had stepped out of the room briefly (the only time that Galecki leaves the stage over the course of the play). If a reading for the part was in the offing before, Brando’s blatant disrespect has soured Williams interest. Things escalate until Jo (Ellie Ricker), Brando’s girlfriend joins them. Williams is quite taken by Jo and there are signs that his attention, and an excessive amount of alcohol, is having an impact on the couple in general and Brando in particular.
To be more specific at this juncture would jeopardize the powerful exchange that follows except to say that there are subtleties of the script that draw us in to Galecki’s insightful interpretation of the playwright, his profound arrogance and playful eroticism for both sexes. In Moskovitz’s Brando, we see the dawning of the star—a raw, brooding, unsettled powerhouse—whose stellar moment comes deep into the play and catches us completely off-guard.
The rustic interior scenic design by David Gallo features a modest 1947 living room framed in exterior seascape elements for Williams Provincetown Massachusetts home. With only a small portable typewriter on a coffee table to signify that one of our greatest playwrights lives and works here, it could be anyone’s coastal home. But for all of the captivating 90-minutes of the play, the quaint living room is the perfect setting for the first meeting between the legendary figures and makes “Kowalski” a fascinating study of Brando’s youthful bravado by Moskovitz and the wildly creative mind of Williams that Galecki so marvelously captures.
PHOTO| Michael Brosilow
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