A House of Horrors
By Sheridan Morley
"900 Oneonta" is about as strange as they come. The title refers to a house somewhere in the Deep South, apparently exclusively peopled by the ghosts of Lillian Hellman and Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill and Truman Capote: a house of gothic horrors and high-camp relative values in which the maid, who turns out to be your illegitimate sister, will almost certainly not turn down the bed, unless it is to revive the moribund old master with sharp sexual shock.
David Beaird is making his British debut as both writer and director, and the play is just stunning, wonderfully full of incest, hatred, lust and jealousy: Kentucky-fried lives, and brilliantly played by a cast led by Leland Crooke as the old patriarch and Jon Cryer and Douglas Henshall as his no-good grandsons.
What is so intriguing about Beaird is the tightrope he walks as writer and director. "900 Oneonta," at the Lyric Studio, frequently lurches into direct parody and even direct quotation from those '30s melodramas, where even the wrought-iron screens were overwrought.
But then, just as suddenly, it moves back into real-life situations of incest, murder and mayhem. It is as though he is trying to find out how much his cast and his audience can take. Having given them the relief of laughter and self- mockery, he then pulls them all back from the brink and even manages to make us care about the fates of these land-grabbing monsters
April 13th 2004
The following is an excerpt from a review of a US version of the play and contains further information.
A Curtain Up LA Review - 900 Oneonta
By Jack Holland
Before coming to the Odyssey, 900 Oneonta was produced in London at the Lyric Hammersmith, the Old Vic and then on the West End where it was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for "Best Play." It is understandable why it was nominated for such an award. It is a mystery as to why such a strong and very American play as this has to go abroad to be recognized.
Written and directed by David Baeird 900 Oneonta is like Tennesee Williams on steroids. Itís set in the living room of a wealthy familyís "creaky old" house in the deep south of Bastrop, Louisiana in 1979. It opens with the grand-daddy patriarch of the family, Dandy, on the floor, clutching his heart and on the verge of dying. He manages to crawl onto his chair and once he starts yelling for his maid the action never stops.
It seems every tragedy that occurs in every Tennesee Williams play has happened in this family and now that the patriarch is dying, itís all going to come out. The play sometimes verges on being overly melodramatic, but the skill of the actors and the fine staging by Mr. Beaird keep it fresh and exciting.