“Orpheus Descending,” a great big louche mess of a play by Tennessee Williams, from 1957—revived at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center, directed by Erica Schmidt—kicks into gear when a good-looking kid called Valentine Xavier (Pico Alexander) slinks into the Torrance Mercantile Store, in a small town in Mississippi. I say “called,” not “named,” because he seems like the type of guy who’s had to shed his given name like a skin, and maybe a handful of others after that, continually improvising. Self-created and just turned thirty, he’s decked out in a snakeskin jacket, carrying a much loved acoustic guitar.
Val’s an odd guy, shrouded in put-on mystery and spouting high-flown, lyrical talk.
In search of a job, he produces a reference letter that’s off-puttingly candid: his former employer at an auto-repair shop says that he is “a peculiar talker and that is the reason I got to let him go.” As for himself, Val offers, “Well, they say that a woman can burn a man down. But I can burn down a woman.”
This story is from the August 07, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the August 07, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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