When Alan Turkington's wannabe movie idol, Chance Wayne, hands Irene MacDougall's aging starlet, Alexandra del Lago, a photograph of his naked lover at the age of 15, the older woman freezes. Long after the picture has been snatched back, she sits stock still, staring ahead in glazed horror. She has seen a vision of youth at its most fecund, and her shock casts a chill across the stage.
Alexandra and her 29-year-old gigolo Chance feel it worst, but there is no one in Tennessee Williams' magnificent play who escapes the inevitability of aging. Their actorly obsession with youth resonates far beyond their audaciously long opening scene, as they wake up in a Florida hotel room another day older.
When the pale wooden shutters of Philip Witcomb's set pull back, we encounter John Buik's Boss Finlay, despised by his mistress for his old man's sexual impotence, and Kim Gerard's Heavenly, whose youthful promise has been ruined by a hysterectomy. Then there's the bunch of small-town racists whose acceptance of the status quo makes them old before their time.
Set against this backdrop of mediocrity, there is something gruesomely appealing in Chance's narcissism and Alexandra's drunken wallowing in former glories. Their denial of reality is almost heroic.
In James Brining's compelling production, the two leads are excruciatingly good. Turkington exchanges his southern restraint - all sexual preening and cool-headed potential - for a neurotic, chemical-fuelled collapse in the second half when he becomes a wreck. In her high-definition makeup and wild mop of hair, MacDougall takes the opposite journey, growing from infantilised dependency to arrogant control as she realises her showbiz comeback has not been the flop she assumed. The battle of such monstrous egos makes ugly viewing, but they hold our attention with car-crash intensity.
· Until November 11. Box office: 01382 223530.
