Set in Provincetown, Cape Cod, in 1940, Kip is a character on the verge of adulthood learning about love, his sexuality and the poetry that breathes within him. The play echoes Williams' own experiences during that "pivotal summer when I was on the brink of growing up."
Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams; 1911-83) was a US playwright, whose controversial plays dealt with themes of repressed sexuality and family conflict. Williams was the most popular playwright in America between 1945 and 1960, winning the Pulitzer Prize twice and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award four times. Amongst serious playwrights, only Eugene O'Neill equalled his achievements on the Broadway stage; several of Williams's plays were also made into successful films. The son of a shoe salesman, Williams grew up in some poverty in Mississippi and Missouri. Many of his early frustrations, which are reflected in his plays, arose from the prudery of his mother and the coarseness of his womanizing father, who, as his son's homosexuality became apparent, invariably referred to him as 'Miss Nancy'. The playwright revealed his homosexuality in his Memoirs (1975), having previously explored the subject in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer. Williams tried his hand at fiction and poetry before turning to drama in the late 1930s, winning a Theatre Guild prize for the four one-act plays entitled American Blues in 1939. Recognition as a major playwright came with The Glass Menagerie, a tender work inspired by the tragic life of his sister, a schizophrenic. His next play, the brutal A Streetcar Named Desire, opened in 1947, winning the Pulitzer Prize and making a star of Marlon Brando. It was followed a year later by Summer and Smoke. In 1949, these three plays were running simultaneously in London. His later works included The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Orpheus Descending (1957), and SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (1959), which opened with Paul Newman and Geraldine Page in the leads. By the late 1950s, Williams was being accused of repeating himself, and after Period of Adjustment (1960) and The Night of the Iguana (1961), his plays were received unenthusiastically. During his later years, Williams became increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol, suffering a nervous breakdown in 1969. He died in 1983.
This previously unpublished autobiographical play‘it is based on Tennessee Williams: Memoirs (LJ 11/1/75)‘was written late in Williams's life and is now being published through his trust. Williams offers a fictionalized remembrance of the pivotal 1940 summer at Provincetown, Cape Cod, where he retreated to rewrite a play intended to be his Broadway debut. While there he had an affair with a Canadian draft-dodger/dancer, Kip, who later died of a brain tumor. Eve Adamson, director of the original 1981 production, maintains in the introduction that the play "seeks a reconciliation between love and art, life and death, and to use two phrases which recur in the play‘exigencies of desperation and negotiation of terms." Unfortunately, a thin plot and weak characterizations make it a minor work in Williams's dramatic canon. However, as one of his most personal plays, bearing the mark of Williams's poetic beauty and pathos, it is recommended for all academic and large public libraries.‘Ming-ming Shen Kuo, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
