pt at large

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

“A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams
New Repertory Theater in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts
Watertown, MA
September 11 - October 7, 2007
Running time 3 hours 15 minutes with two 10 minute intermissions

A streetcar named Desire rumbled through the rowdy streets of 1947 New Orleans delivering Blanche DuBois to her sister Stella’s cramped one bedroom apartment where she lived with her husband Stanley Kowalski. The streetcar couldn’t have caused any more of a tragic mess had it plowed right through the tiny apartment in their blue-collar neighborhood.

One spectacular reason to find your way to the New Repertory Theater Company’s production of Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire” in Watertown is Rachel Harker in the role of Blanche DuBois. Harker’s incandescent performance nails Blanche’s incremental decline from quiet desperation to madness.

It’s a bear of a play to stage - thousands of words of dialogue, sustained emotional range required from the four principal actors, and running time of over three hours. It can wear down all but the most involved actors, let alone an audience. And of course there’s the 1951 Elia Kazan film adaptation that hurtled Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh to fame.

Todd Alan Johnson as Stanley, Marianna Bassham as Stella, Rachel Harker as Blanche in the New Repertory Theater Company production. Photo Boston Globe.

Under Harker’s command, Blanche’s coquetry, rage, desire to be loved, dysfunctional sexuality, deluded sense of gentility, and a stubborn incapacity to acknowledge the smallest of self-truths, flash like facets of a Cartier diamond.

In a first week performance, the nearly packed house broke into spontaneous applause after Blanche’s gut stoked tirade about Stanley that begins, “"He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's something even sub-human-something not quite to the stage of humanity yet!…”

Blanche mismanaged and lost the family’s large home, Belle Reve, in Mississippi. She was fired from her teaching job for seducing a high school student. Before journeying to New Orleans, she “had depended on the kindness of strangers,” men whom she solicited in a flea bitten hotel in Mississippi. Harker’s deconstruction of Blanche comes from some visceral place that most of us don’t dare to plumb.

Todd Alan Johnson seems miscast as Stanley. The sexual tension that underlies the antagonism between him and Blanche is not present. Nor is chemistry obvious between him and his wife Stella.

His rages and the alpha dog mentality that fuel relationships with his wife and friends are loud but disconnected. The high-pitched voice he affects in his fits of temper is brittle and monochromatic. I never saw the 1951 film but bet that no matter what the pitch, Brando’s voice had to be laced with wily or transparent testosterone. The final bedroom scene between Stanley and Blanche is disappointingly flat and anti-climactic.

Marianna Bassham as Stella refracts more convincingly against Blanche than with her husband Stanley. There’s nitro but not enough glycerine to make us buy into her lust for Stanley and her acceptance of her life style of men’s night out bowling leagues and revolving card games. Stella’s guilt and relief when she agrees to institutionalize Stella will cost her.

Compared to the hefty dialogue time for Blanche, Stella, and Stanley, Bates Wilder’s Mitch seems more of a sketch than a bored-in character. Blanche’s flirting with him is desperate and doomed. Perhaps Wilder underplays Mitch’s own desperation and yearning for connection.

John R. Malinowski’s setting is especially gritty, close quartered, and utilitarian. He fashioned  the Kowalski's apartment upon a dais with an alley that crescents around it in a semi-circle, and a semi-opaque  second floor apartment where the neighbors argue. Neon signs from nearby stores and bars beckon from the perimeter. For the observant, he adds subtle changes in the apartment’s décor that underscore Blanche’s presence from act to act.

Frances Nelson Mc Sherry’s costume design is very 1950s. John Malinowski’s lighting is straightforward on/off to accommodate brief scene changes.

Tennessee Williams grew up in a dysfunctional southern family and was no stranger to sexual tension, violence and loneliness - the themes that vein his plays.

To some incalculable degree, whether expressed overtly or experienced internally, these themes inhabit our own emotional fabric. We may loathe Blanche’s deficiencies but we understand something about the demons that throttle her.

Meet The Kiteman of Westport Beach: John Davenport

John Davenport’s presence on Westport’s Cherry and Webb beach is easy to notice. His calling card, a massive array of whimsical, colorful kites drifting lazily in the sea breeze, pinpoints his location from April till October.

With hand-made appliqué banners set firmly in the sand to mark off the edges of his “flying field,” he sits happily in a lawn chair, ready to answer questions from curious or admiring beach-goers about the soft fabric wonders floating above him. Born and raised in Somerset, Mr. Davenport recalled coming to Westport since 1956 when his family spent time at his mother’s family cottage on Cadman’s Neck. He’s lived in Westport full time since 1971. The first place he purchased was Al Lees,  Jr.’s Sea Swing Farm on Old Horseneck Road. He currently lives on Cadman’s Neck in a home his late father built.

A graduate of MA College of Pharmacy in Boston, Mr. Davenport, is a long-term care consultant for PharMerica of Warwick, RI. A chance walk down Thames Street near one of his work sites in Newport brought him to the High Flyers Kite Company. The colorful displays and the owner’s enthusiasm and knowledge of the hobby hooked Mr. Davenport. He’s been flying kites “religiously” since 1987.

First summers in Westport
“We kids all had boats and would zoom around, go quahogging, waterskiiing, and generally have a good time around my mother’s family summer cottage. This place just gets in your blood.”

First kites
“We had big cemetery behind our house in Somerset and we’d fly paper kites off fishing poles with hundreds of feet of line on them. Sometimes kites got so far away we never got them back.”

Day job
“Federal law states that every long-term care facility has to have a consultant pharmacist. When PharMerica supplies medications to a facility, they package me with the deal so I come along with the contract. I’ve been with PharMerica for over twenty years.”

Kites as magnets
“I’ve been flying kites in Westport for a good ten years. Put up a kite and it puts a smile on people’s faces. They come right over, it’s like a magnet. They ask did I build it, where I came up with the idea and the next thing you know I’m preaching the value of kites. ”

The kite man
“Kids will see me unloading my car and you’ll hear them shout, ‘Look, mommy, there’s the kite man!’ I’m known as the ‘Kite Man of Westport Beach.’”

Westport beach ideal for kite flying
“As the land heats up, the cool air from the ocean starts this heat pump so you get a stable, reliable southwest wind around noon. Since the beach faces SW if anything happens to your kite you can always recover it on land. A salt water landing would ruin a kite. The ideal wind is SW 10 - 12 mph.”

What you like about Westport
“Where else do you have three choices how to get to the beach on a summer morning - by bike, by boat, or by car!”

Materials used for kites
“They’re made out of rip stop nylon, basically in two weights, 3/4 oz. for light winds and 1.5 oz. for durability in stronger winds. I’ve made animal kites -frogs to elephants- rainbow kites, kites that spin, and a revolver kite.”

Friendships made
“I’ve made many friends. We send Christmas cards and email each other about our projects and send pictures of our latest creations.”

A great chance to combine two hobbies
“I’m a big civil war buff and have been to most of the civil war battlefields. Next year the American Kitefliers Association is going to have its grand national festival in Gettysburg PA. I will work all this winter to build a kites that have a North/South theme.  All the kites flying under my main lift kite will be war related - cannons, cannonballs, flags, rifles and whatever else I can think of.”

Other hobbies
“One of my other favorites is astronomy. I belong to Astronomical Association of Southern New England.”

An emotional 9/11/01 experience
“I think we all felt a sense of desperation. I felt the need to fly kites so I packed up every single one of my red white blue kites and went to the beach and put up this huge red, white, and blue display. National pride overwhelmed me.  People came up to me and said thank you. It was the most emotional time I've ever had flying kites.”

New Year’s Fly in Newport
“Members of the region’s American Kitefliers Association show up in Newport no mater what the weather. The age-old story is that when you’re flying a kite you’re taking all your troubles and attaching them to the kite and watching the wind carry them away. When you pull the kite back down it’s the start of a new year.”

Life Lesson
“It’s a lesson in life that people have to learn to find a hobby that gets the stress right out of their lives. Kite flying has done that for me and done it for many other adults.”

Radiology technologist knows detection is critical to survival

Monday, September 10, 2007   

Radiology technologist knows detection is critical to survival

Laurie Palmer of Westport has been a radiological technologist with a specialty in mammography for 27 years.Our health. Some of us take it for granted — maybe we all do — until it becomes a question mark. That's the time we head for our doctors, nurse practitioners, and to hospitals that house the technology we've come to depend upon to determine what ails us.

X-rays, ultra sound tests, MRIs, and CT scans are front line tools doctors use to assess our body's general heath. Each and every one of the pieces of equipment used for these assessments has to be administered by a skilled technician.

Laurie Palmer of Westport is one of these technicians. For the past 27 years she's been a radiological technologist with a specialty in mammography at Truesdale Radiology Imaging Services in Fall River. The facility is part of the Southcoast Hospitals Group that includes Charlton, St. Luke's, and Tobey Hospitals.

An annual mammogram (x-ray) is recommended for women over 40 and is used to detect cancer in a woman's breast. A mammogram produces a black and white image of the breast that is "read" by a doctor who specializes in interpreting these images.

"For most women it's not a pleasant exam. The more I can get them to relax, the better chance I have of getting a really good exam for them," Mrs. Palmer said. During the exam the breast is pressed between two plastic plates to flatten and spread the tissue. The pressure lasts for a few seconds and is necessary to get a good picture. Those few seconds of the 20-minute procedure can hurt.

"I've learned from physical therapists how to position women while doing the mammogram and even tried to position myself on the machine to see how to be as gentle as possible while getting more of the tissue on the plates," she said.

Mrs. Palmer administers two types of mammograms. One type, a screening mammogram, is a routine part of an annual exam for women who exhibit no symptoms. A doctor orders the second type, a diagnostic mammogram of a particular area of the breast, when a lump or other irregularity is found.

"Cancer" is one of the scariest words in our vocabularies. Since the chance of a woman having breast cancer at some point in her life is 1 in 8, women coming for mammograms have cause to be anxious. Mrs. Palmer needs to be able to read a woman's emotional state as well as she reads the dials on her x-ray machines.

"You have to be a really good listener," she said as she thought about her daily interactions with women. "I know many of them from previous exams, so I might ask how their sons or daughters are doing. Since I'm from Westport there are people who know me from town and might ask me about myself or my family."

It took some trial and error for Mrs. Palmer to find the glide path into her career. "I had originally wanted to go into radiology when I was at Westport High School but was told I'd be bored. I can't understand that now, because it's such a versatile, challenging field," she recalled with a laugh.

But she heeded the advice when she graduated from high school in 1974 and entered the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth as a psychology major with a minor in special education. By 1977 she'd figured out enough of her own psychology to realize that her heart wasn't in that career path.

The medical field, on the other hand, was in Mrs. Palmer's DNA. Her mother, Lois Montigny Guay, had been the director of the Westport Visiting Nurses Association. "She was a smart person, an RN, and was respected by the physicians, especially Dr. Kirkaldy and Dr. Lepreau. She was always there for people," Mrs. Palmer said.

And there was Mrs. Palmer's grandmother, Agnes Raposa, who was a 1947 founder of the Schwartz Center for Children, now located in Dartmouth.

Back to school went Mrs. Palmer. She enrolled at Northeastern University and spent the next 28 months rotating between clinical practice and academic radiology classes at Northeastern, graduating in 1979 with an associates of science degree in Radiology. Since then she's been granted newer licenses and passed more exams to keep up with advances in radiology.

Early detection has helped make the big "C" a curable disease. Mrs. Palmer fondly recalled a cancer survivor whom she got to know during two decades of annual mammograms. During one of her visits, the woman presented Mrs. Palmer with a beautiful porcelain pin of an angel, a gift she cherished. One day, the pin fell to the floor and broke. Two days later, Palmer heard that the woman had died at about the same time.

"She was a 20-year survivor. She had a good life because her cancer was caught early. She died of heart failure," Mrs. Palmer said. She gave the pin to the woman's daughter, also a survivor, who later gave Mrs. Palmer an angel Christmas ornament the mother had made.

"I keep it in my bedroom and think of her every day. That pin reminds me of her and of what I do. It's one of the reasons I get up every day to go into this stressful job," she said.

At Truesdale, one of the buffers against the stress of the job is the staff with whom she works. "I work with a really nice group of people. I've been with some of them over 20 years. We laugh together, yell at each other, and cry together. We're like family," she said.

Mrs. Palmer has no trouble finding ways to relax when she returns home to Westport. Yoga, gardening, boating and volunteer work at the Westport Point United Methodist Church help diffuse the tension from her Tuesday to Friday occupation.

Mrs. Palmer, her husband, Matthew, and their two children, Kristin, 24, and Ryan, a freshman at Westport High School, often trek less than a mile down the road to the Point to row out to their Boston Whaler for a day on the river. "One of the things I love about Westport is the river. It's so tranquil. As soon as I get in the boat, I let out a big sigh of relief," she said.

X-ray machines dedicated to mammography are much more sophisticated than the first breast imaging equipment that was introduced in 1969, and Mrs. Palmer has kept up with the advances. She earned a bachelor of science degree in Health Management from Anthem College in 2005 and is currently taking an online certificate program in PACS Administration (Picture Archiving Communication Systems) through Bunker Hill Community College.

"Everything in radiology is now computerized. We're going from film to imaging on high-resolution computer screens. Some day I might like to teach how to integrate radiology and PACS. I'd miss the contact with patients, but in the meantime the college program helps me be better at my job as the system changes," she said.

American Cancer Society guidelines for early breast cancer detection

• Mammogram: Women ages 40 and older should have a mammogram every year and should continue to do so for as long as they are in good health.

• Clinical breast exam: Women in their twenties and thirties should have a clinical breast exam (CBE) as part of a regular exam by a health expert, preferably every three years. After age 40, women should have a CBE by a health expert every year.

• Breast awareness and breast self-exam: Self-exam is an option for women starting in their twenties. Women should be told about the benefits and limitations of the self-exam. Women should report any changes in how their breasts look or feel to their health professional right away.

For more information, see www.cancer.org