The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, volume 5

by Tennessee Williams

The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in a matching format the plays of one of America’s most influential and innovative dramatists. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes. Volume 1 leads with Battle of Angels, Williams’ first produced play (1940), an early version of Orpheus Descending. This is followed by the texts of his first great popular successes: The Glass Menagerie (1945) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), which established Williams’s reputation once and for all as a genius of the modern American theatre.

Genres: Plays, Drama

380 pages, Hardcover

Published January 17, 1976

About the author

Thomas Lanier Williams III, better known by the nickname Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright of the twentieth century who received many of the top theatrical awards for his work. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee," the state of his father's birth.

Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, after years of obscurity, at age 33 he became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. This play closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With his later work, he attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century, alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Much of Williams' most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Milk Train... is, in my view, a lost classic of Tennessee Williams'-- gothic, ethereal, campy and tragic (in the Greek sense), with a preoccupation about the intersection between creativity/art and death/decay that is typical of many of the writer's middle- and late-period works. Kingdom of Earth (aka The Seveth Descent of Myrtle) is kind of Williams-by-numbers but does have some interesting staging ideas and Myrtle is very much one of his "ladies of the fog" and fairly well drawn. Small Craft Warnings is the other gem of the collection-- the characters are mostly static but as a slice-of-life portrait it functions quite well, depicting a number of very believable drunks and misfits during an eventful night at a seedy waterfront bar. The Two-Character Play, which concludes the volume, did the least for me, but wasn't especially terrible by any means, just somewhat unmemorable. Sounds like a 4 out of 5 to me.

[j_ay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore ****o
Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle) ****o
Small Craft Warnings **ooo
The Two-Character Play **ooo