Tennessee Williams
Venerable author of The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, Suddenly Last Summer, Summer and Smoke, Night of the Iguana, and I Can't Imagine Tomorrow is still hot, baby!
Nov 8, 2006
It’s been 23 years since America's greatest gothic playwright died, but Tennessee Williams' marvelous characters live on in the deepest unspoken part of us.
Williams, who once admitted "every part of me is chronic" , was a man of endless vices from sex to drug addiction. For better or worse, he was one of the greatest playwrights the world has ever known creating timeless insatiable characters through five decades of writing over 70 plays for the theatre including classics A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Night of the Iguana, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Summer and Smoke, Suddenly Last Summer, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, and Something Cloudy, Something Clear. Less critically and commercially successful works included In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, The Red Devil Battery Sign, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, and A House Not Meant to Stand.
Noted one-acts include Mister Paradise, And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens, Perfect Analysis Given By a Parrot, I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix, and I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow. .
Tennessee Williams eviscerated his private life for the world to experience documenting the sorrow and joys of his "Southern" existence through his work- primal, heart-wrenching pagan poetry never flinching from any human taboo be it impotence, alcoholism, masturbation, even cannibalism.
Inspired by the work of American poet Hart Crane ,Williams, never judgmental of people in fiction or reality, could “see and feel his characters before he wrote them” hear their "mad music”. Streetcar’s Blanche Dubois was the paradoxical Williams drawn to the seedy underbelly of life, yet fearing it. He created many strong fictional women, his favourite - sexually latent Alma Winemiller in Summer and Smoke. His tyrannical mother Miss Edwina is the seething Mrs.Venable in Suddenly Last Summer. The Rose Tatoo and I Can't Imagine Tomorrow were tender dedications to Williams' great love Frank Merlo, and his beloved sister Rose for whom he wrote all his plays, is immortalized as Laura in The Glass Menagerie.
In 2007, The Shaw Festival is doing one of William's first plays Summer and Smoke. Written in 1948 and originally titled Chart of Anatomy, it's a play dear to Williams' heart because it's about the struggle of puritan life versus sexual abandon. It's the juxtaposed aspects of Williams' personal struggle between puritanical upbringing at the hands of Miss Edwina and his cruel father who oft called him Miss Nancy, versus the freedom to write and express himself through rampant sexuality.
Alma Winemiller, a minister's daughter, suffers unrequited love for Doctor John Buchanan, once a wild and untamed youth. Alma proves to be a strong influence on him when circumstances of life and family change John into a more serious, committed man.
At last ! That long-awaited chance for lifelong happiness.
Call it rotten timing.
John's wanton ways of the past have also influenced Alma and when she is finally ready for phyiscal intimacy, John is no longer interested and Alma turns elsewhere for dangerous comfort. Alma's one of Williams' favorite characters because she too, lived ' by the shadow of the rectory."
New York's Roundabout Theatre is currently doing one of Williams' most terrifying works Suddenly Last Summer. Written in 1958, this one-act play was first presented off Broadway with another Williams one-act Something Unspoken. Suddenly Last Summer is a lacerating account of family betrayal and social immoralities, partially based on the Williams' family decision to lobotomize his schizophrenic sister Rose, while he was away at college. Williams' guilt at not being able to stop the operation was tantamount . He never forgave his parents and he devoted himself to the care of his sister Rose for the rest of his life. Violet Venable is clearly derived from Miss Edwina and other strong women in the Williams' circle of life. Catherine Holly, is the innocent Rose, and Tennessee Williams, is the sexually carnivorous Sebestian Venable.
There has been volumes written about this flamboyant 'Southen gent' but legendary director Elia Kazan , instrumental in Tennessee Williams theatrical ticket to eternal fame, said it all.
Everything in his plays is in his life, and everything in his life is in his plays….
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