Hoffman and McDermott in Baby Doll

Perhaps Tennessee Williams and comedy don’t usually share your same mind-space, but here is a comedy-drama rather neglected in the back of his vast repository of work. Princeton’s McCarter Theatre (link includes a behind the scenes video) has found it, resurrected it, and mounted it in an exciting production on view through October 11.

The play, Baby Doll, was always a mashup. It began with two one-acts (“27 Wagons Full of Cotton” and one with a title something like “The Dinner Nobody Wanted”). It was turned into a script for a 1956 Elia Kazan movie starring Caroll Baker, Karl Malden, an Elie Wallach in his first movie role. That version went through many Kazan-initiated revisions and excited much Church opposition for its racy content—tame today compared to prime time tv. Williams later wrote a full-length stage play based on the screenplay, Tiger Tail, that had a short Broadway run in 1999. But generally, the project lay neglected.

Recently, it was retranslated and revived in France by Pierre Laville, and when McCarter’s Emily Mann read Laville’s version, she saw great potential. She and Laville share “adapted for the stage” credits, as further work had to be done by Mann to reflect American perspectives, particularly regarding race relations in Mississippi in the early 1950s. Miraculously, two weeks before rehearsals began, Mann discovered in Princeton University’s Firestone Library the original movie script by Williams, as he wrote it before Kazan’s “help.” More revisions ensued.

“Baby Doll” is a 19-year-old beauty, married to a much older man, Archie Lee Meighan and living in a falling-apart plantation house (handsome stage set). Baby Doll thought she was not “ready for marriage” at age 18. Although the wedding took place then, it is yet to be consummated (she still sleeps in her crib), according to the deal she, Archie Lee, and her father made before his death. The waiting—which is to end in two more days when Baby Doll turns 20—is driving Archie crazy. He both loves and lusts after her, feelings she does not return.

Archie Lee is nearly destitute, having lost his cotton gin business to the nearby Syndicate plantation, and Baby Doll is furious that the house’s furniture is repossessed. When the Syndicate’s gin is destroyed in a not-so-mysterious fire, the young plant manager, handsome Silva Vacarro, pays the Meighans a visit, bringing with him 27 wagons full of cotton for Archie’s gin. When Archie leaves to take care of the cotton, Silva—an Italian and exotic in those parts—tries to trick Baby Doll into revealing her husband’s role in the fire, and, as New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood says, “we can practically see her little mind clicking along a few beats behind her tongue.”

The comedy in the play comes not from Neil Simon-style one-liners, but out of the human absurdities of normal, everyday action and impulse. In a post-show discussion, the actors said Mann insists they play their lines straight; playing for laughs would cheapen the effect. That earnestness is what makes the four characters—Baby Doll (Susannah Hoffman), Archie Lee (Robert Joy), Silva (Dylan McDermott), and Baby Doll’s Aunt Rose Comfort (Patricia Conolly)—so believable. While you’re chuckling, your heart is twisting. The play ends on a bit of a Scarlett O’Hara moment, with Baby Doll’s resolution to let tomorrow take care of itself.

Veteran actor Patricia Conolly talked about some of the similarities between the elderly, half-deaf, semi-oblivious maiden aunt she plays here and other Williams characters she’s portrayed. Such women live on the edges of family and society, and they must make enormous effort to “get along,” even with the most demanding hosts (“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” Blanche DuBois says.) Otherwise, as Aunt Rose Comfort puts the problem, they “have no place to go.” (Aunt Rose is a secondary character who manages to put a monkey wrench in situations fairly often, being where she shouldn’t be or not being where she should be. And, if you’ve ever had an elderly relative who’s become hard-of-hearing, you’ll know Williams got it right: she hears what she wants to hear!)

At only 90 minutes, Baby Doll is not as complex as Williams’s Big 3: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie, but it’s well worth adding to your Williams experience.