Camino Real

Camino Real, Tennessee Williams' 1953 play, marked a departure from his earlier work. Indeed, it was departure from almost anything anyone had seen. Williams notes in an an article published in the New York Times before the Broadway opening (commenting on the out-of-town tryouts): "There have been plenty of indications already that this play will exasperate and confuse a certain number of people which we hope is not so large as the number it is likely to please. At each performance a number of people have stamped out of the the auditorium, with little regard for those whom they have had to crawl over, almost as if the building had caught on fire, and there have been sibilant noises on the way out and demands for money back if the cashier was foolish enough to remain in his box."

He later rationalizes: "As for those patrons who departed before the final scene, I offer myself this tentative bit of solace: that these theatre-goers may be a little domesticated in their theatrical tastes. A cage represents security as well as confinement to a bird that has grown used to being in it."

The use of a cage as a metaphor is telling, for the action of Camino Real does take place in a cage of sorts. The title is Spanish for "royal road," and the setting is a town in some banana republic, presumably in South America. One side of the street is a fancy hotel, and the operator, a fat man named Gutman (named after the Sidney Greenstreet character in The Maltese Falcon) runs the town. The other side of the street is skid row, with a fleabag hotel, a pawn shop, and a gypsy woman's stall.

A number of characters, both from literature and history, are trapped there. The opening sees Don Quixote and Sancho Panza wander in, but we eventually meet Casanova, Lord Byron, Marguerite (the name of the main character in Camille) and Esmeralda, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who is the gypsy woman's daughter. Eventually they are joined by Kilroy, the typical American (certainly named after the World War II era graffiti, "Kilroy was here") who isn't sure how he got there. The whole thing gave me the effect of watching a Twilight Zone episode, but with much more literary pretension.

The play was a flop, as Williams was right--conventional audiences didn't understand it. It has since received a much more appreciative response. Williams, though writing in a surrealistic style (characters are killed and carted off by menacing "street cleaners," Esmeralda regains her virginity every night by the light of the moon) he still is able to suggest the dark torment of the soul that marks his other work. There's a crackling good suspense scene when an unscheduled plane, called "the Fugitivo," arrives and Marguerite wants on it, but she doesn't have her money or passport ready. It's like everyone's worst airport dream.

I don't know what it means, and frankly it didn't matter much, because I enjoyed reading it, and would love to see it staged, as I'm sure that would give me keener insight into it. Sometimes writers are just ahead of their time.