Baby Doll

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The Fountain Theatre
Extended through October 30

As a film, Baby Doll was a little too racy for segments of America when it premiered in 1956. Its poster featured a scantily clad (by that era’s standards) young woman in a slip, curled up in a crib, sucking her thumb. Directed by Elia Kazan from a screenplay by Tennessee Williams (based on two of his stage plays), the movie passed muster with the industry’s regulators but was condemned by the Legion of Decency, and roundly criticized by Cardinal Francis Spellman, a politically influential Roman Catholic prelate who termed it “revolting” and “morally repellent.” Spellman failed to get it pulled from the theaters, however, enabling audiences to relish Carroll Baker in the title role of a rather simple and emotionally backward girl of 19, caught in the struggle between her brutish husband, played by Karl Malden, and a business rival of his from Sicily, realized by then newcomer Eli Wallach.

This current production, directed by Simon Levy at the Fountain Theatre, is based on a script by Pierre Laville and Emily Mann that, in Mann’s words, “streamlines” Williams’s film script. With little prelude, we’re thrust right to the core of the discord between Baby Doll (Lindsay LaVanchy) and her loutish lustful middle-aged husband Archie (John Prosky). Bequeathed to Archie by her dying father out of concern for her future, Baby Doll has forestalled the consummation of her marriage till she’s “ready” — the ultimate deadline being her 20^th birthday, less than 48 hours away. It’s pretty clear she isn’t — and not so clear if Archie, an ugly-spirited man — will wait any longer.

Trouble at home isn’t Archie’s only problem; in addition, his cotton gin business is failing, making him desperate enough to set fire to the factory of a rival company, in order to force them to bring their cotton to him. This precipitates the entrance of Silva Vacarro (Daniel Bess), a company rep come to seek out Archie’s services, at the same time as he’s hot on the trail of Archie’s whereabouts at the time of the fire.

Vacarro’s introduction to Baby Doll sets the stage for their steamy pas-de-deux after Archie goes off and leaves them alone (a plot point I never did quite buy even in Williams’s original). Pretty soon Vacarro, who likes brandishing his riding crop, is putting alternately benign and menacing moves on the impressionable young woman. For her part, Baby Doll vacillates between intimidation and attraction — and it bears mention that despite her inexperience with fornication, she’s aware of her own charms and freely employs them when she wants to.

One of the problems with this story is that once you discard its titillating aspects — there are elements of S&M in Baby Doll’s relationship with both men — you’re left with characters from a white trash world who aren’t very bright or likable or sympathetic; they lack the mediating gentility of other Williams characters, from plays like Streetcar or Cat or Night of the Iguana. This “streamlined” adaptation underscores all of that.  It’s left to the director and his ensemble to compensate in performance, to uncover depths missing in the setup to make the narrative’s journey worthwhile.

This show fails to accomplish that. A convincingly come-hither performer, LeVanchy appears coy, fluttery, seductive, manipulative and vulnerable as called for, but the essential through-line of her character and her first inklings of what it means to be a woman still don’t play persuasively. Prosky’s Archie is intense and repellant (you can easily see him at a Klan rally), but how much more interesting it would be to develop his vulnerable side. Bess, with presence to spare, also could go deeper. Karen Kondazian as Baby Doll’s dotty Aunt Rose needs to shed some of her kitschy mannerisms so we’re more moved by the plight of the hapless woman she’s depicting.

There are some affecting moments, all of them intimate ones between Baby Doll and Vacarro when it seems like a genuine relationship just might be possible. Hopefully, the production evolves to feature more of these.

Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Avenue, Hollywood; Fri.- Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 5 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m.; Extended through October 30th. (323) 663-1525 or www.FountainTeatre.com. Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.