EgoPo Classic Theater and Abrahamse & Meyer Productions present Tennessee Williams’s The Knightly Quest

Haven’t heard of The Knightly Quest? Me neither. Williams published the work as a novella in 1966. A review by Randolph Hudson the following year described the tale as “a modern fable, refreshingly heavy-handed in its conception.” Camp stands in for some of Williams’s heavy-handedness in this touring production from Capetown, South Africa-based actor/director duo Marcel Meyer and Fred Abrahamse (longtime EgoPo collaborators). It lands in the upstairs lounge at Cockatoo, a Gayborhood bar.

Fun, but not refreshing

Meyer gives a tour-de-force performance as Gewinner Pierce, a queer man with a painted face in a silver space jumpsuit. Meyer pronounces the character’s name “gay-WIN-uh” in a flawless Southern drawl with a splash of Amanda Wingfield. The only performer is Meyer, who uses Barbie dolls as stand-ins for the other roles. Meyer effectively uses his eyes to signal which character is speaking.

The results are often fun, but not terribly refreshing. The Knightly Quest just isn’t one of the best-developed works by Williams, a prolific writer. One-dimensional characters fill a plot that is convoluted, though quite unusual. A mixture of genres, the tale combines elements of satire, thriller, and science fiction. The Knightly Quest is at its best when combining the wry humor and social commentary of Williams’s most famous plays with timely themes of surveillance, conspiracy, and tensions between conservative, religious white people and everyone else.

The overt sexuality in The Knightly Quest, while often crass, seems novel in comparison to the author’s earlier work. The title is a play on words that evokes medieval masculinity, chivalry, and Don Quixote and then juxtaposes them with nightly quests for a queer hookup. Meyer performs a monologue about Gewinner’s elaborate preparations for nocturnal cruising and the way sex can make companions out of strangers. “Love of such a kind is a lunatic thing,” Gewinner drawls, but he renders it base, beautiful, and important.

Distraction and immersion

“Each of us knows the nightly quest in different ways,” Gewinner observes before fleeing in a spaceship. The stakes are high. A mysterious, sinister force has the power to possess the planet, while the president seeks “to control Blacks, reds, yellows,” women, and “sissy fuck-offs” like Gewinner. I sat up in my seat for this part of the stage adaptation, which took its time getting there. This may be due to flaws in the source material, but Abrahamse & Meyer Productions and EgoPo could have done more to offset them.

On opening night, noise from an event downstairs provided a constant distraction. Ticketholders were urged to fashion and wear tinfoil hats throughout the show, but the initial novelty faded into more opportunities for distraction. The dolls are a campy touch, but relying on one actor makes the shifting plot even harder to follow. Moreover, this production of The Knightly Quest is not the immersive event it claims to be. Despite taking place at a gay bar, the setting resembles a traditional theater with an actor onstage and the audience seated in rows. “Immersive” is gaining popularity as a term or concept in the performing arts, but we need a less porous definition that is used with greater discretion.

A worthy B-Side

Reviving a forgotten work involves risk, and EgoPo takes an admirable one in staging this modern queer fable. Williams is a great playwright and this is a genre-defying work, but it’s also an odd story with a slow start. As Hudson put it in his 1967 review, “there is much that one can criticize” in The Knightly Quest, from poorly defined characters to weak storytelling. That said, this production works on the “B-Side” of EgoPo’s Queer Revolutions season, given that traditional vinyl B-sides contain lesser-known works or outtakes that sometimes got cut from another project. The Knightly Quest is a minor note in the scope of queer revolution, but it’s one worth hearing.