Heidi and I went to see Tennessee Williams’s The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, featuring Olympia Dukakis in the lead role. I have to admit I was looking forward to seeing an Academy Award winner in person, and she didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the play itself. The writing was uneven, surprisingly so for a play Tennessee Williams himself rewrote and one where the Hartford Stage’s Dramaturg said has been massaged since.

The whole story is focused on an exploration of the main character, Flora Goforth. She’s a dying, wealthy woman, working on her memoirs. Her life story is full of friends and lovers and husbands but through it all, we discover that she’s actually quite alone. We learn this, though, through too many scenes that take a loooong, time to get advance the story.

I got the sense, watching it, that the ending was what Williams was writing around, that it was the core of the idea. I just don’t think he figured out how to get there.