Reviewing novels, short stories, plays and non fiction.
At a cheap hotel in Mexico, defrocked priest Lawrence Shannon clashes with bawdy hotel owner Maxine Faulk, and meets a saintly seeming drifter and artist, Hannah Jelkes, travelling with her elderly grandfather. Fever, stormy weather and lust wrack this Southern Gothic play by Tennessee Williams.
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Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams. Most of the play takes place in the Royal Palms Hotel, an “old fashioned but still fashionable” hotel in St. Cloud, on the Gulf Coast.
Chance Wayne is first introduced wearing the classic Williams trope; white silk pyjamas. He starts the day with a cigarette and a ‘bromo’; an alka seltzer hangover remedy. The waiter has to mix it for him, due to his hands shaking, due to his alcohol consumption the night before.
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Suddenly, Last Summer was a 1958 one act play written by Tennesse Williams. The wealthy poet Sebastian Venable has been killed, and the family are gathering to hear his cousin, Catharine Holly, describe his scandalous death. Sebastian’s mother doesn’t believe her niece and has had Catharine committed; an attending doctor, known for performing lobotomies, injects her with a truth serum to get to the bottom of things.
“Suddenly Last Summer” was, perhaps,the most poetic I’ve done. – Tennessee Williams, Interview with Studs Terkel.¹
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