The Books: “The Gnädiges Fräulein” (Tennessee Williams)

Next on the script shelf:

TokyoHotel.jpgNext Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is The Gnädiges Fräulein, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 7: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Other Plays.

Another lengthy one-act, first produced in 1966. The original cast included Margaret Leighton and Zoe Caldwell. There is one scene in this very bizarre play that I literally do not know how you would do. It invovles a big strutting bird called a cockaloony – and it has to walk around on stage, it has to “caw” on cue, it has to walk up the steps of the house, it has to stare menacingly at the main characters … I just … Then there’s one scene where the Fräulein comes back from the fish-docks, and the cockaloonies have to be ALL OVER HER. Pursuing her, pecking at her … I just … what? I wonder how directors handle it. Not that this play is done all that much, but when it is … A trained cockaloony??

This play is WACKED.

There are two gossipy old bitches – one who runs a boarding house (she calls it “the big dormitory”) and has social-climbing aspirations, and one who is the gossip columnist of the local newspaper. (It takes place on one of the Florida Keys – it’s called Cockaloony Key. Obviously because the key is filled with these birds) So the two old bitches are named Molly and Polly – and Molly (the one with the boarding house) is constantly conniving to get Polly (the gossip columnist) to write a flattering column about her and all the work she has done for the community. Of course – Polly is more interested in dirt and scandal … and always comes sniffing around the boarding house for any news. The boarding house is full of weirdo disreputable characters … Indian Joe has to be one of Williams’ strangest creations. Williams says, in the character desription, that Indian Joe could be played by a dancer – because he has next to no lines – and it is more important that he be a perfect physical specimen than an actual actor. He is an Indian, and he dresses up in buckskins, wears no shirt, has a feather in his hair, and carries a tomahawk. But his hair is straw-blonde, and his skin a pale gold … He is very weird, he speaks in mono-syllables, and I can’t even begin to describe his character, and what he’s all about. He’s just WEIRD.

But then there is The Gnädiges Fräulein – another boarder. This woman was a singer of some repute in the days of the Hapsburgs – apparently she was part of a very successful vaudeville act in Austria – something that now, 40 years later or whatever, SHE CANNOT GET OVER. She barely has any lines. She looks through her old scrapbooks. She has memorized all of her clippings. She dresses as though she is a reject from the Moulin Rouge. She is broke. And Molly told her that if she brings fish to the kitchen 3 times every day – for lunch – then she won’t be evicted. So 3 times every day The Gnädiges Fräulein, dressed in her Moulin Rouge outfit, races down to the fish docks to gather up any thrown away fish. She has to RACE because if she doesn’t get there first, the cockaloonies will get all the fish. So basically – the cockaloonies have it IN for this new competition – and they start to crowd her, follow her around … and eventually, by the end of this damn weird little play – they have pecked out both her eyeballs.

Good times, good times.

I’ll excerpt a bit from when Molly tells Polly the story of The Gnädiges Fräulein’s early career.


From The Gnädiges Fräulein included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 7: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Other Plays, by Tennessee Williams

MOLLY. OK. Now open you rnotebook and spit on the point of your pen. I’m gonna give you the historical data on the Gnädiges Fräulein. [She rises from rocker, slings drum over her shoulders, and advances onto the forestage] I’m going to belt it out with my back to you and the face of me uplifted to the constellation of Hercules toward which the sun drifts with the whole solar system tagging along on that slow, glorious joyride toward extinction. [She beats the drum] — “The Gnädiges Fräulein!” — Past history leading to present, which seems to be now discontinued! [She beats the drum] — Upon a time, once, the Gnädiges Fräulein performed before crowned heads of Europe, being the feminine member of a famous artistic trio! [She beats drum]

POLLY. Other two members of the artistic trio?

MOLLY. Consisted of a trained seal and of the trained seal’s trainer. [Drum]

POLLY. This don’t sound right, it don’t add class to the write-up.

MOLLY. The trained seal trainer was a Viennese dandy. [Drum] Imagine, if you can, a Viennese dandy — can you?

POLLY. Continue!

MOLLY. This was in the golden age of Vienna, the days of the Emperor Franz Josef and the trained seal trainer, the Viennese dandy, was connected collaterally with the House of Hapsburg — a nobleman, a young one, with a waxed blond mustache and on his pinkie a signet ring with the Hapsburg crest engraved on it. Now! [Drum] Imagine, if you can, the Viennese dandy …

POLLY. Figure?

MOLLY. Superb.

POLLY. Uniform?

MOLLY. Glove-silk: immaculate: gold epaulettes, and, oh, oh, oh, many ribbons, all the hues of the rainbow. Eyes? Moisture-proof, but brilliant. Teeth? Perfect. So perfect you’d think they were false, as false as the smile that he threw at his admirers. Now can you imagine the Viennese dandy?

POLLY. Sure I can, I know him.

MOLLY. Everybody’s known him somewhere and sometime in their lives — if they’ve lived — in their lives. [Drum] Now hear this! [Drum] Scene: a matinee at the Royal Haymarket in London? Benefit performance? Before crowned heads of Europe?

POLLY. The Gnädiges Fräulein!

MOLLY. The Gnädiges Fräulein! — The splendor, the glory of the occasion, turned her head just a bit. She overextended herself, she wasn’t content that day just to do a toe dance to music while bearing the paraphernalia back and forth between the seal and the trainer, the various props, the silver batons and medicine ball that the seal balanced on the tip of his schnozzola. Oh, no, that didn’t content her. She had to build up her bit. She suddenly felt a need to compete for attention with the trained seal and the trained seal’s trainer.

POLLY. How beautiful was the beautiful Viennese dandy?

MOLLY. I described him.

POLLY. I lost concentration during the description.

MOLLY. Imagine the Viennese dandy like Indian Joe. [Polly gasps and scribbles frantically for a few moments] Now then … the climax of the performance. [Drum] The seal has just performed his most famous trick, and is balancing two silver batons and two gilded medicine balls on the tip of his whiskery schnozzle while applauding himself with his flippers. [Drum] The audience bursts into applause along with the seal. [Drum] Now, then. The big switcheroo, the surprising gimmick. The trained seal trainer throws the trained seal a fish. What happened? It’s intercepted. Who by? The Gnädiges Fräulein. NO HANDS. [She imitates the seal] She catches the fish in her choppers! [Drum] Polly, it brought down the house. [Drum] This switcheroo took the roof off the old Royal Haymarket, and she’s got clippings to prove it! I seen them in her scrapbook!

POLLY. Why’d she do it?

MOLLY. Do what?

POLLY. Intercept the fish that was thrown to the seal.

MOLLY. Why does a social leader like me, in my position, have to defend her social supremacy against the parvenu crowd, the climbers and Johnny-Come-Latelies? [She shouts through the megaphone] HANH? HANH? ANSWER ME THAT!

POLLY. I figured that maybe she had a Polynesian upbringing and dug raw fish.

MOLLY. You’re way off, Polly. Y’see herer’s how it was, Polly. Always before when he threw a fish to the seal, he would throw to the Gnädiges Fräulein an insincere smile, just that, a sort of a grimace, exposing white teeth and pink gums, while clicking his heels and bending ever so slightly in an insincere bow.

POLLY. Why?

MOLLY. WHY! — He regarded her as a social inferior, Polly. A Viennese dandy? Elegant? Youthful? Ravishingly attractive? Hapsburg crest on the signet ring on his pinkie? What could he throw to the Gnädiges Fräulein but an insincere smile with a very slight insincere bow tha tbroke her heart every time she received it from him. He couldn’t stand her because she adored him, Polly. Well, now. A gimmick like that, a switcheroo, a new twist as they say in show biz, well, it can’t be discarded, Polly. If the public buys it, its’ got to be kept in the act, regardless of jealous reactions among the rival performers. Well — [Drum] There was, of course, a hell of a hassle between the trained seal’s agent and the Gnädiges Fräulein’s. There was complaints to Equity and arbitrations and so forth. But it was kept in the act because it was such a sensation. The trained seal’s agent threatened to break the contract. But popular demand was overpowering, Polly: the new twist, the switcheroo, had to be kept in the act. The trained seal’s agent said: Sit tight! [Drum] Bide your time! [Drum] And it appeared for a time, for a couple of seasons, that the trained seal and the trained seal trainer would accept, acquiesce to force majeure, as it were! However — Now hear this! [Drum] At a gala performance before crowned heads in Brussels, no, no, I beg your pardon, before the crowned heads at the Royal in Copenhagen! [Drum] — Tables were turned on the Gnädiges Fräulein! [Drum] — When she made her sudden advance, her kangaroo leap, to intercept the fish that was thrown to the seal, the seal turned on her and fetched her such a terrific CLOUT! [Drum] — Left flipper, right flipper! [Drum] — To her delicate jawbone that her pearly whites flew from her mouth like popcorn out of a popper. [Drum] Honest to Gosh, sprayed out of her choppers like foam from a wild wave, breaking! [Drum] — They rang down the curtain. — The act was quickly disbanded … After that? She drifted. The Gnädiges Fräulein just drifted and drifted and drifted … — She lost her sense of reality and she drifted … — Eventually she showed on the Southernmost Key. Hustled B-drinks for a while at the old Square Roof. Celebrated Admiral Dewey’s great naval victory in the Spanish-American War, by mounting a flag-pole on the courthouse lawn in the costume of Lady Godive but with a GI haircut. All this while she was running up a big tab at the big dormitory. However! — [Drum] — In business matters, sentiment isn’t the cornerstone of my nature. I wasn’t about to carry her on the cuff when her cash gave out. Having read her press clippings, I said, OK! Hit the fish-docks, baby! Three fish a day keeps eviction away. One fish more keeps the wolf from your door. — All in excess of four fish do as you please with! — POLLY! TELESCOPE, PLEASE! [She has turned her attention to a sudden increase of disturbance down at the fish-docks. Polly tosses a telescope to her as she crosses to the gate]

POLLY. — Any sign of her, Molly?

MOLLY. Yep, she’s on her way back.

POLLY. Alone?

MOLLY. No. With a cockaloony escort.

POLLY. Is she making much progress?

MOLLY. Slow but sure. I admire her.

POLLY. [sentimentally] I admire her, too.

MOLLY. I hope you’ll give her a sympathetic write-up.

POLLY. I’m gonna pay tribute to her fighting spirit.

MOLLY. Don’t forget to mention the big dormitory.

POLLY. I’ll call it The Spirit of The Big Dormitory.

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3 Responses to The Books: “The Gnädiges Fräulein” (Tennessee Williams)

  1. He apparently had a thing about nature red in tooth and claw.

    Maybe the cockaloonies could be done by people wearing costumes … I can see the Papageno and Papagena costumes from “Magic Flute”, can’t you?
    : )

    Other than that, it would have to be some kind of puppets. Hmmm….

  2. red says:

    Laura – yeah, like little puppets on remote control or something … small cockaloony R2 D2s

  3. Don’t know about the baleful staring, or whatever it was. Claymation, maybe?

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