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| Suddenly Last Summer | |
|---|---|
 First edition cover (New Directions) | |
| Written by | Tennessee Williams |
| Characters |
|
| Date premiered | January 7, 1958 (67 years ago) (1958-01-07) |
| Place premiered | York Playhouse New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | Aging, greed, hypocrisy, sexual repression |
| Genre | Drama |
| Setting | room and garden of Mrs. Venable's mansion in theGarden District ofNew Orleans |
Suddenly Last Summer is a one-actplay byTennessee Williams, written in New York in 1957.[1] It openedoff Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams' one-acts,Something Unspoken (written in London in 1951).[2]: 52 The presentation of the two plays was given the overall titleGarden District, butSuddenly Last Summer is now more often performed alone.[3] Williams said he thought the play "perhaps the most poetic" he had written,[2]: 86 andHarold Bloom ranks it among the best examples of the playwright's lyricism.[4]
In 1936, in theGarden District of New Orleans,[a] Mrs. Violet Venable, an elderly socialite widow from a prominent local family, has invited a doctor to her home. She talks nostalgically about her son Sebastian, a poet who died under mysterious circumstances in Spain the previous summer.[b] During the course of their conversation, she offers to make a generous donation to support the doctor's psychiatric research if he will perform alobotomy on Catharine, her niece, who has been confined to St. Mary, a private mental institution, at her expense since returning to America.[5]: 14–16 Mrs. Venable is eager to "make her peaceful" once and for all by erasing her memories of Sebastian's violent death and hishomosexuality; Mrs. Venable is especially adamant that Catharine stop talking about the latter, in order to preserve her late son's reputation.[5]: 13–14
Catharine arrives, followed by her mother and brother. They are also eager to suppress her version of events, since Mrs. Venable is threatening to keep Sebastian's will inprobate until she is satisfied, something Catharine's family can't afford to challenge.[5]: 23 But the doctor injects Catharine with atruth serum and she proceeds to give a scandalous account of Sebastian's moral dissolution and the events leading up to his death, how he used her to procure young men for his sexual exploitation,[5]: 44 and how he was set upon, mutilated, and partially devoured by a mob of starving children in the street. Mrs. Venable lunges at Catharine but is prevented from striking her with her cane. She is taken off stage, screaming "cut this hideous story from her brain!" Far from being convinced of Catharine's insanity, however, the doctor concludes the play by stating he believes her story could be true.[5]: 50–51
From its first page, the script is rich in symbolic detail open to many interpretations.[5]: 3 The "mansion ofVictorian Gothic style" immediately connects the play withSouthern Gothic literature, with which it shares many characteristics.[6]: 229 Sebastian's "jungle-garden," with its "violent" colours and noises of "beasts, serpents, and birds ... of savage nature" introduces the images ofpredation that punctuate much of the play's dialogue.[c] These have been interpreted variously as implying the violence latent in Sebastian himself;[7] depicting modernity's vain attempts to "contain" itsatavistic impulses;[8] and standing for a bleak "Darwinian" vision of the world, equating "the primeval past and the ostensibly civilised present."[d]
TheVenus flytrap mentioned in the play's opening speech can be read as portraying Sebastian as the "pampered" son,[10]: 337 or "hungry for flesh";[e] as portraying the "seductive deadliness" concealed beneath Mrs. Venable's "civilized veneer,"[9]: 112 while she "clings desperately to life" in her "hothouse" home;[12] as a joint "metaphor for Violet and Sebastian, who consume and destroy the people around them";[13] as symbolising nature's cruelty, like the "flesh-eating birds" of theGalapagos;[14] as symbolising "a primitive state of desire,"[15] and so on.
Williams referred to symbols as "the natural language of drama"[2]: 250 and "the purest language of plays."[16] The ambiguity arising from the abundance of symbolism is therefore not unfamiliar to his audiences. What poses a unique difficulty to critics ofSuddenly Last Summer is the absence of its protagonist.[10]: 336 All we can know of Sebastian must be gleaned from the conflicting accounts given by two characters of questionable sanity, leaving him "a figure of unresolvable contradiction."[6]: 239–241
In spite of its difficulties, however, the play's recurrent images of predation andcannibalism[f] point to Catharine's cynical pronouncement as key to understanding the playwright's intentions: "we all use each other," she says in Scene 4, "and that's what we think of as love."[5]: 34 Accordingly, Williams commented on a number of occasions that Sebastian's death was intended to show how:
Man devours man in a metaphorical sense. He feeds upon his fellow creatures, without the excuse of animals. Animals actually do it for survival, out of hunger ... I use that metaphor [of cannibalism] to express my repulsion with this characteristic of man, the way people use each other without conscience ... people devour each other.[2]: 146, 304
The first production of the play was performedoff-Broadway, starting on January 7, 1958. Produced alongsideSomething Unspoken under the collective titleGarden District, it was staged by the York Playhouse company at the York Theatre on First Avenue in New York.Anne Meacham won anObie Award (Annual Off-Broadway Theatre Awards) for her performance as Catherine. The production also featured Hortense Alden as Mrs. Venable,Robert Lansing as Dr. Cukrowicz, Eleanor Phelps as Mrs. Holly and Alan Mixon as George Holly, and was directed by Herbert Machiz, with the set designed by Robert Soule and costumes by Stanley Simmons. Incidental music was byNed Rorem.[17]
The play's London debut was presented, under club conditions, at theArts Theatre on September 16, 1958, running until October 11. (The venue, though situated in the West End, was a club and therefore not technically a West End theatre.) Directed, like the off Broadway production, by Herbert Machiz, it was coupled once again withSomething Unspoken, with the cast headed byPatricia Neal as Catherine,Beatrix Lehmann as Mrs. Venable and David Cameron as Dr Cukrowicz. The set was by Stanley Moore, the costumes by Michael Ellis, and the music by Ned Rorem.[18]
The film version was released byColumbia Pictures in 1959, starringElizabeth Taylor,Katharine Hepburn andMontgomery Clift; it was directed byJoseph L. Mankiewicz from ascreenplay byGore Vidal and Williams. The movie differs greatly from the stage version, adding many scenes, characters andsubplots. TheHollywood Production Code forced the filmmakers to cut out the explicit references tohomosexuality. The film received threeAcademy Award nominations: Hepburn and Taylor were both nominated forBest Actress in a Leading Role, and it was also up forBest Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.
The play was adapted forBBC Television in 1993 under the direction ofRoyal National Theatre headRichard Eyre and starringMaggie Smith,Rob Lowe,Richard E. Grant andNatasha Richardson. It aired in the United States onPBS as an episode ofGreat Performances.[19] Smith was nominated for anEmmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie.[20] According to Lowe, his personal driver during production was also the personal driver forMontgomery Clift on the 1959 film.[21]
The play made itsBroadway debut in 1995. It was performed together withSomething Unspoken, the other one-act play that it originally appeared with under the titleGarden District. It was presented by theCircle in the Square Theatre. The cast includedElizabeth Ashley,Victor Slezak andCelia Weston.[22]
The play debuted in theWest End in 1999 at theComedy Theatre,London, starringSheila Gish as Mrs. Venable,Rachel Weisz as Catharine,Gerard Butler as Dr. Cukrowicz and directed bySean Mathias.[23]
Michael Grandage directed a 2004 production at theLyceum Theatre, Sheffield, featuringDiana Rigg as Mrs. Venable andVictoria Hamilton as Catherine. The production toured nationally before transferring to theAlbery Theatre,London.[24] The production received enthusiastic reviews,[25] and Hamilton won theEvening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress for her performance.[26]
An off-Broadway production in 2006 by theRoundabout Theatre Company starredBlythe Danner,Gale Harold andCarla Gugino.[27]
The play was part of theSydney Theatre Company's 2015 season. DirectorKip Williams blended live camerawork with traditional stagecraft in a production starringEryn Jean Norvill as Catherine andRobyn Nevin as Venable.[28] The production received three nominations at the 2015Helpmann Awards, with Nevin nominated for Best Actress, the production nominated for Best Play, and Williams winning for Best Director.
A French translation of the play was staged at theThéâtre de l'Odéon in March-April 2017.Stéphane Braunschweig directed Luce Mouchel as Mrs. Venable, Marie Rémond as Catherine, Jean-Baptiste Anoumon as Dr. Cukrowicz, Océane Cairaty as Miss Foxhill, Virginie Colemyn as Mrs. Holly, Glenn Marausse as George, and Boutaïna El Fekkak as Sœur Félicité.
