The Books: Excerpt from “Vieux Carré” (Tennessee Williams)

Next on my script shelf:

Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf Vieux Carré, included in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton And Other One-Act Plays. This one was produced in 1978 – and it’s very much like the film Moulin Rouge – same basic plot and theme.

A young idealistic writer comes to New Orleans to write. He gets a room in a rooming house – a famous one that’s on the tourist track – Vieux Carr&eacute – on Toulouse Street. And during his stay there – he encounters all kinds of degenerates, and people on the fringe of society – and he writes it all down – but at the same time, being side by side with such sadness, loneliness, degeneracy – changes him forever. He loses his idealism forever.

Some great characters. There’s Nightingale – the gay painter – who is dying of tuberculosis and refuses to admit that it is anything more than a cold. He is a lecherous old queen, always sneaking into other people’s rooms (men’s rooms) and trying to feel people up. He believes that he is a great painter, that his major work is left undone – but in the meantime, he sits in various gay coffee houses and bars in the cities and does watercolors of the clientele. This is his way of picking people up. He’s a sad and kind of disgusting character.

There’s a couple: Jane and Tye. Tye is a barker at a stripshow – a gorgeous young hunk of man, but completely corrupt in his soul. He uses heroin. Jane was a fashion designer, and she comes from “the North” (meaning “the Northeast”) – she used to be respectable – but she met Tye – and basically no one has ever touched her the way Tye touches her – and so, with his help, she sinks down into the gutter. Tye is not faithful. Of course not. But there is something in the sex they have together that completely entraps Jane, time and time again, no matter how many times she tries to get away.

There’s the loony landlady Mrs. Wire (played by Sylvia Miles in the original production). She knows that her rooming house is famous, a historical landmark, and she relentlessly harasses all of the loser tenants – she monitors their comings and goings, she eavesdrops … she thinks they’re a bunch of losers. She’s a lunatic – great character.

There are two little spinster ladies who live together in the rooming house – they have no money – they are behind in their rent – and they scrounge through garbage cans during the daytime for food. They huddle together in spinsterish fright, they are like one person.

There’s Sky – a beautiful young drifter – who takes on symbolic meaning to all the people in the house. He’s a clarinet player. He’s planning a trip “West”. He has no money, just a car … he kind of befriends The Writer and invites him to come along on the trip with him.

The Writer, within 4 months of staying at Vieux Carr&eacute, starts to find it impossible to even contemplate leaving. The sadness and desperation all around him has seeped into him. He is as trapped as they are.

Occasionally, the Writer will turn out to the audience and narrate. He is our guide through Vieux Carr&eacute.

I’ll excerpt from one of the scenes between The Writer and Nightingale, the lecherous dying gay painter.

From Vieux Carré, by Tennessee Williams

[There is a spotlight on the writer, stage front, as narrator]

WRITER. That Sunday I served my last meal for a quarter in the Qyarter, then I returned to the attic. From Nightingale’s cage there was silence so complete I thought, “He’s dead.” Then he cried out softly —

NIGHTINGALE. Christ, how long do I have to go on like this?

WRITER. Then, for the first time, I returned his visits. [He makes the gesture of knocking at Nightingale’s door] — Mr. Rossignol … [There is a sound of staggering and wheezing. Nightingale opens the door; the writer catches him as he nearly falls and assists him back to his cot] — You shouldn’t try to dress.

NIGHTINGALE. Got to — escape! She wants to commit me to a charnal house on false charges …

WRITER. It’s raining out.

NIGHTINGALE. A Rossignol will not be hauled away to a charity hospital.

WRITER. Let me call a private doctor. He wouldn’t allow them to move you in your — condition …

NIGHTINGALE. My faith’s in Christ — not doctors.

WRITER. Lie down.

NIGHTINGALE. Can’t breathe lying — down ….

WRITER. I’ve brought you this pillow. I’ll put it back of your head. [He places the pillow gently in back of Nightingale] Two pillows help you breathe.

NIGHTINGALE. [leaning weakly back] Ah — thanks — better … Sit down.

[A dim light comes up on the studio area as Tye, sitting on the table, lights a joint]

WRITER. There’s nowhere to sit.

NIGHTINGALE. You mean nowhere not contaminated? [The writer sits.] — God’s got to give me time for serious work! Even God has moral obligations, don’t He? — Well, don’t He?

WRITER. I think that morals are a human invention that He ignores as successfully as we do.

NIGHTINGALE. Christ, that’s evil, that is infidel talk. [He crosses himself] I’m a Cath’lic believer. A priest wouldl say that you have fallen from Grace, boy.

WRITER. What’s that you’re holding?

NIGHTINGALE. Articles left me by my sainted mother. Her tortoise-shell comb with a mother-of-pearl handle and her silver framed mirror. [He sits up with difficulty and starts combing his hair before the mirror as if preparing for a social appearance] Precious heirlooms, been in the Rossignol family three generations. I look pale from confinement with asthma. Bottom of box is — toiletries, cosmetics — please!

WRITER. You’re planning to make a public appearance, intending to go on the streets with this — advanced case of asthma?

NIGHTINGALE. Would you kindly hand me my Max Factor, my makeup kit?

WRITER. I have a friend who wears cosmetics at night — they dissolve in the rain.

NIGHTINGALE. If necessary, I’ll go into Sanctuary! [The writer utters a startled, helpless laugh; he shakes with it and leans against the stippled wall] Joke, is it, is it a joke? Foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to hide His head!

WRITER. Don’t you know you’re delirious with fever?

NIGHTINGALE. You used to be kind — gentle. In less than four months you’ve turned your back on that side of your nature, turned rock-hard as the world.

WRITER. I had to survive in the world. Now where’s your pills for sleep, you need to rest.

NIGHTINGALE. On the chair by the bed.

[Pause]

WRITER. Maybe this time you ought to take more than one.

NIGHTINGALE. Why, you’re suggesting suicide to me which is a cardinal sin, would put me in unhallowed ground in — potter’s field. I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost … you’ve turned into a killer?

WRITER. [compulsively, with difficulty] Stop calling it asthma — the flu, a bad cold. Face the facts, deal wtih them. [He opens the pillbox] Press tab to open, push down, unscrew the top. Here it is where you can reach it.

NIGHTINGALE. — Boy with soft skin and stone heart …

[Pause. The writer blows the candle out and takes Nightingale’s hand]

WRITER. Hear the rain, let the rain talk to you, I can’t.

NIGHTINGALE. Light the candle.

WRITER. The candle’s not necessary. You’ve got an alcove, too, with a window and bench. Keep your eyes on it, she might come in here before you fall asleep. [A strain of music is heard. The angel enters from her dark passage and seats herself, just visible faintly, on Nightingale’s alcove bench] Do you see her in the alcove?

NIGHTINGALE. Who?

WRITER. Do you feel a comforting presence?

NIGHTINGALE. None.

WRITER. Remember my mother’s mother? Grand?

NIGHTINGALE. I don’t receive apparitions. They’re only seen by the mad.

[The writer returns to his cubicle and continues as narrator]

WRITER. In my own cubicle, I wasn’t sure if Grand had entered with me or not. I couldn’t distinguish her from a — diffusion of light through the low running clouds. I thought I saw her, but her image was much fainter than it had ever been before, and I suspected that it would fade more and more as the storm of my father’s blood obliterated the tenderness of Grand’s. I began to pack my belongings. I was about to make a panicky departure to nowhere I could imagine … The West Coast? With Sky?

[He is throwing things into a cardboard suitcase]