Marlon Brando (Brandon Flynn) has an unusual audition with Tennessee Williams (Robin Lord Taylor) in Kowalski (photo by Russ Rowland)

KOWALSKI
The Duke on 42nd Street
New 42 Studios
229 West Forty-Second St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 23, $40-$140
www.kowalskionstage.com

In 1947, still basking in the glow of the breakout success of his semiautobiographical play The Glass Menagerie three years earlier, Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams III was preparing to take the oddly titled A Streetcar Named Desire to Broadway. Although he wanted thirty-four-year-old Oscar nominee John Garfield to star as the protagonist, Stanley Kowalski — the name of a Polish American soldier Williams met at the International Shoe Company — hot director Elia Kazan, affectionately known as Gadge, insisted he audition a little-known twenty-three-year-old actor named Marlon Brando from Omaha, Nebraska. Brando had appeared in a handful of stage productions, including I Remember Mama at the Music Box; Maxwell Anderson’s Truckline Cafe, which lasted only ten performances at the Belasco; and Jean Cocteau’s Eagle Rampant, in which he played Stanislas opposite Tallulah Bankhead, but he was fired before it came to New York, where it flopped. He wouldn’t make his film debut until getting the lead role in Fred Zinnemann’s 1950 military drama, The Men.

Gregg Ostrin re-creates what that initial meeting could have been like in the somewhat superficial yet satisfying Kowalski, running at the Duke through February 23.

Originally produced in Los Angeles in 2011, the show has been significantly revised and updated for its New York premiere. The main narrative is framed by a 1977 interview with Williams (Robin Lord Taylor), who wants to discuss his latest work but instead is steered into going behind the scenes of Streetcar yet again.

“Do we need to talk about it? I’m here to talk about my latest one. I think it’s my best. What is it called? It’s called, well, I can’t remember that, baby. No, of course I know the name. Tiger Tail, yes. I think it’s my best play since . . . my last play,” he tells an unseen journalist, who wants to hear about Brando. “Who? No, I’m just joking. Of course I know to whom you are referring. I just don’t want to talk about him. Does he need more publicity? He is certainly capable of generating more than enough on his own. Of course I remember the first time I met Marlon. No, it was not in a theater.”

The narrative goes back thirty years, when Williams, known to his friends as Tom, is living in his Provincetown beach house with his muse and partner, Pancho Rodriguez y Gonzalez (Sebastian Treviño), a rugged young Mexican American who loves to drink and have sex. Hanging around is Margo Jones (Alison Cimmet), a Texan who had directed Williams’s previous two plays, You Touched Me and The Glass Menagerie, and is not happy when she learns that her supposed close friend has chosen to go with Kazan for Streetcar. “You want my assessment? The play is genius and so are you,” she tells Tom, adding, “You’re also a callous little shit who can rot in hell.”

Williams seems to enjoy manipulating people, pulling their strings until they bite back and then hitting even harder. He regularly belittles Pancho, and his lover is getting tired of it; when Pancho complains about having to use the outhouse because the inside toilet is broken, demanding, “When are we gonna get the plumbing fixed?,” Williams replies, “As soon as you decide to fix it.” The angry Pancho responds, “I’m not your fucking plumber.” When Pancho calls Williams “a pathetic old drunken queen,” Williams declares, “I am thirty-six, which makes me neither pathetic, nor old. Drunken and a queen, well, I suppose that’s a different story.”

Kowalski reimagines a day with Tennessee Williams (Robin Lord Taylor), Margo Jones (Alison Cimmet), Jo (Ellie Ricker), Marlon Brando (Brandon Flynn), and (Pancho Rodriguez (Sebastian Treviño, not in photo) (photo by Russ Rowland)

After Pancho and Margo head out to a nightclub and Williams goes into the bedroom, Brando (Brandon Flynn) enters the empty living room, three days late. Bold and brawny in a tight white T-shirt, leather jacket, jeans, and boots, he is cool, calm, and collected, especially when Williams comes upon him and assumes he is either a thief or is there for Pancho. Brando takes his time, enjoying Williams flirting with him, before letting the playwright know he is there to audition for the role of Stanley. They instantly engage in a verbal boxing match, throwing around subtle and overt insults at each other as Brando fixes the toilet and the fusebox and they both keep drinking and smoking while sharing private tales, Brando about losing his virginity, Williams about his beloved sister, Rose.

They are soon joined by Brando’s twenty-year-old traveling companion, Jo (Ellie Ricker), who had no idea they had an appointment with Williams. She is overwhelmed, having seen Menagerie five times, and Williams capitalizes on her fandom, cozying up to her in order to make Brando jealous. “Darling girl, let’s not stand on ceremony. Call me Tom. All my closest friends do,” Williams says to Jo, then turns to Brando and orders, “You may call me Tennessee.” The jabs keep coming fast and furious as Brando essentially auditions without using the script.

David Gallo’s set is a welcoming, cozy living room with a bar on one side and a small kitchen on the other. Lisa Zinni’s apt costumes help define the characters instantly. Taylor (Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, The Shooting Stage) is masterful as Williams, balancing the playwright’s vulnerabilities and insecurities with his giant ego and need to intimidate others. Flynn (Kid Victory, Much Ado About Nothing) has raw energy as Brando, who is on the cusp of becoming one of the biggest stars in the world; while Taylor inhabits Williams, it’s hard not to keep judging how good a job Flynn is doing as Brando, even though he is not mimicking him exactly, which would be an impossible task. In one of the most resonant moments of the play, Williams watches with quiet disgust as Brando, who has already helped himself to cookies and food in the fridge, fishes through a dish of candy, touching every one before deciding not to have a piece, knowing how much it would annoy the playwright. It sums up their relationship without a word said about it.

In his off-Broadway debut, Treviño (On Your Feet, The Jury) is striking as the underwritten Pancho, clearly the model for Stanley in Streetcar; Ricker is charming as Jo, an aspiring actress who is pulled between her affection for both Williams and Brando; and Cimmet (Party Face, someone spectacular) is effective as Williams’s abused sounding board.

Did it all happen this way? It might not perfectly match the accounts of the afternoon published in such books as Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me and John Lahr’s Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, but it entertainingly captures the essence of a meeting that changed the future of Broadway and Hollywood.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]