Five By Tenn

Five By Tenn, now at Manhattan Theater Club, gives us five Tennessee Williams short plays from 1937 to 1970 interspersed with words from his letters and other writings as intros. It is interesting to see Williams' treatment of mostly gay themes grow and develop through time as the world changed. Sketches of later fully rounded characters appear, such as Penny Fuller's frantic hopes for her somewhat different son in Summer at the Lake.

It is an uneven show, with some miscasting and misdirection (by Michael Kahn). Cameron Folmar is twenty years too old for his role as the hopeless gay son in Lake, but he gives an award- level, riveting performance as a transvestite in And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens. His nuance and depth blaze on the stage. The "rough trade" he seduces in this play is performed by a one-level (the same drunk and sober), unconvincing Myk Watford.

David Rasche is over the top as the husband in The Fat Man's Wife, a little closer to an actual person (although a bit like Monty Wooley) as D.H. Lawrence in Adam and Eve on a Ferry, which has some rather good jokes in it, and just fine as the inarticulate man in I Can't Imagine Tomorrow, which is about depression and cancer. Ms. Fuller is quite good in both of her roles, including a trembling supplicant to Lawrence, and Kathleen Chalfant is great in all her roles: an arthritic ancient servant, a wealthy dowager, Lawrence's mitteluropeanwife, and as the woman dying of cancer.

Good lighting by Traci Klainer on James Noone's serviceable set and Catherine Zuber's excellent costumes enhance the proceedings. All in all, the evening, despite its flaws, with its flares of language from one of America's greatest playwrights, is indeed worth seeing.