(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 1/30.)
Total fearlessness is not a requirement for embarking on an acting career. But it is definitely a necessity for essaying the role of the dying gorgon Flora Goforth in “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,” a curious, rather curdled 1963 play by Tennessee Williams.
In Olympia Dukakis, the star of the new Off Broadway revival directed by Michael Wilson at the Laura Pels Theater, the Roundabout Theater Company has found an actress with the fortitude to risk ridicule in this fitfully moving, patchily eloquent but often preposterous drama about the loneliness and fear that can attend our going forth into the great unknown. Fortunately, Ms. Dukakis also possesses the talent to make the effort worthwhile.