Vieux Carre at Redcat

Vieux Carre

Redcat
631 West 2nd Street Los Angeles

Like Williams' first big success The Glass Menagerie, Vieux Carre is a "memory play," set in the boarding house in New Orleans where Williams himself stayed as a young man during the Depression. The young writer, as narrator, remembers his artistic and sexual awakening there. Inhabitants of the house swirl up out of the writer's mind as archetypal Williams characters, longing for release and haunted by thwarted dreams.

Presented by The Wooster Group

Thru - Dec 12, 2010

Tuesdays: 8:30pm

Wednesdays: 8:30pm

Thursdays: 8:30pm

Fridays: 8:30pm

Saturdays: 8:30pm

Sundays: 7:00pm

Price: $45-$55

Show Type: Drama

Box Office: 213-237-2800

www.redcat.org

Vieux Carre Reviews

Average Rating based on 5 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Los Angeles Times - Highly Recommended

"...I'd trade a dozen or so Broadway retreads of Williams' acknowledged masterpieces for one brilliant production of the erratic "Vieux Carré," a play in which the innocent and dissolute sides of Williams' sensibility confront each other. I'm not sure if any traditional staging could sort out the work's tonal shifts, the lurches from grotesque comedy to autumnal pathos, from bone-chilling loneliness to ribald sleaze. But the Wooster Group's patently unorthodox approach will be hard to beat."

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- Charles McNulty

Variety - Somewhat Recommended

"...The Wooster Group, in the wake of stimulating previous visits to the downtown Redcat space, is less than scintillating in applying its patented blend of found-object rubbish and video art to Tennessee Williams' "Vieux Carre." A memory-based sequel of sorts to "The Glass Menagerie," the 1978 text isn't nearly as interesting, but deserves better than this overintellectualized, underpercolated deconstruction marshaled by Group leader Elizabeth LeCompte."

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- Bob Verini

LA Weekly - Recommended

"...LeCompte provides richly textured curtains of aural and visual images accompanying the text, thanks in large part to the sound collage designed by Matt Schloss and Omar Zubair, and by Jennifer Tipton's lighting scheme. Some of the images are tiny but crucial. On a small downstage monitor, for example, a flame flickers. Later the image on that screen becomes water. This symbolically mirrors Mrs. Wire's attempt to squelch the debauchery in her flophouse by sending scalding water through her floorboards onto the rooms below. It's hard, just from the drama of that event, to pluck images of fire and water as elemental forces of life and death, yet it's there for the taking in Andrew Schneider's video design."

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- Steven Leigh Morris

Backstage - Recommended

"...It's an explosion of Tennessee Williams. Or an exploitation-which, in the lift-the-veil world of Williams, is probably perfectly okay. In its newest multimedia extravaganza, the Wooster Group shakes up the venerated playwright's very personal "memory play"-which is set in a New Orleans boarding house-and throws a harshly avant-garde, high-tech light on the shadowy inhabitants and events. The result is a fascinating exploration that boldly rips open Williams' somewhat precious package. However, especially in this large venue, the result is an impressive barrage of words and images that distances us from the material and characters."

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- Jennie Webb

Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended

"...Make no mistake. The Wooster Group's Vieux Carré is designed for serious theater-goers. Casual shoppers might just as well pass it by. But, if they do pass it by, they will miss a grand opportunity to discover that late Williams had the same gifts for compassion and insight and the same vivid poetic sense as early Williams. And perhaps with a more bitterly profound vision of humankind. Vieux Carré is a masterpiece. The Wooster Group has given it its due. Bless them for it. And get over to the REDCAT, where it is being performed for too brief a time. I promise you: occasions like this are far too rare."

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- Harvey Perr

Vieux Carre at Redcat

Vieux Carre

Vieux Carre Reviews

Los Angeles Times - Highly Recommended

Variety - Somewhat Recommended

LA Weekly - Recommended

Backstage - Recommended

Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended

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