Suddenly last summer / The milk train doesn't stop here anymore / Small craft warnings
by Tennessee Williams
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These three dramatic works by Tennessee Williams explore the darker side of human nature and are haunted by a sense of isolation and regret. 'Suddenly Last Summer' is the starkly told story of Catherine, who seemingly goes insane after her cousin Sebastian dies in grisly circumstances on a trip to Europe. 'The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore' is a passionate examination of a wealthy old woman as she recounts her memories in the face of death, while in 'Small Craft Warnings' a motley show more group of people - including a blowsy beautician, a discredited alcoholic doctor, a vulnerable waif and two gay men - sit around a seedy bar on the Californian coast, each contemplating their own desperate fate. show lessTags
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This edition contains three plays by America's greatest playwright, Tennessee Williams: Suddenly Last Summer, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, and Small Craft Warning. All three are relatively short one-act plays that each deal with the darker sides of human nature and are tinged throughout with regret and isolation.
Suddenly Last Summer, probably my favourite, deals with Catherine who seemingly is insane after the death of her cousin in Europe. The tension between Catherine and her mother and brother on the one side, and her aunt on the other, is expertly done and the climax is well developed.
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore deals with a wealthy old woman and her last few days - how she deals with her memories and show more those around her as she is dying. It is a modernist play, with the stage assistants taking a role in the play, but ultimately it left me feeling rather empty - the main character is unlikeable and brash, but then Williams is good at creating starkly realistic characters.
The last play, Small Craft Warnings, is set in a seedy bar on the Californian coast as a motely crew of characters each deal with their own desperate fate. This is also one I liked as the conflict between the characters was well-developed and realistic, and the characters themselves well-realised.
Overall, this is a fine collection of one-act plays by Williams and a good addition to a connoisseur of Williams' plays. It however is not the place to start for someone looking for more of Williams' well-known plays. show less
Suddenly Last Summer, probably my favourite, deals with Catherine who seemingly is insane after the death of her cousin in Europe. The tension between Catherine and her mother and brother on the one side, and her aunt on the other, is expertly done and the climax is well developed.
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore deals with a wealthy old woman and her last few days - how she deals with her memories and show more those around her as she is dying. It is a modernist play, with the stage assistants taking a role in the play, but ultimately it left me feeling rather empty - the main character is unlikeable and brash, but then Williams is good at creating starkly realistic characters.
The last play, Small Craft Warnings, is set in a seedy bar on the Californian coast as a motely crew of characters each deal with their own desperate fate. This is also one I liked as the conflict between the characters was well-developed and realistic, and the characters themselves well-realised.
Overall, this is a fine collection of one-act plays by Williams and a good addition to a connoisseur of Williams' plays. It however is not the place to start for someone looking for more of Williams' well-known plays. show less
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After O'Neill, Williams is perhaps the best dramatist the United States has yet produced. Born in his grandfather's rectory in Columbus, Mississippi, Williams and his family later moved to St. Louis. There Williams endured many bad years caused by the abuse of his father and his own anguish over his introverted sister, who was later permanently show more institutionalized. Williams attended the University of Missouri, and, after time out to clerk for a shoe company and for his own mental breakdown, also attended Washington University of St. Louis and the University of Iowa, from which he graduated in 1938. Williams began to write plays in 1935. During 1943 he spent six months as a contract screenwriter for MGM but produced only one script, The Gentleman Caller. When MGM rejected it, Williams turned it into his first major success, The Glass Menagerie (1945). In this intensely autobiographical play, Williams dramatizes the story of Amanda, who dreams of restoring her lost past by finding a gentleman caller for her crippled daughter, and of Amanda's son Tom, who longs to escape from the responsibility of supporting his mother and sister. After The Glass Menagerie,Williams wrote his masterpiece, A Streetcar Named Desire, (1947), along with a steady stream of other plays, among them such major works as Summer and Smoke(1948), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1954), and Suddenly Last Summer (1958). His plays celebrate the "fugitive kind," the sensitive outcasts whose outsider status allows them to perceive the horror of the world and who often give additional witness to that horror by becoming its victims. Stephen S. Stanton has summed up Williams's "virtues and strengths" as "a genius for portraiture, particularly of women, a sensitive ear for dialogue and the rhythms of natural speech, a comic talent often manifesting itself in "black comedy,' and a genuine theatrical flair exhibited in telling stage effects attained through lighting, costume, music, and movements." After The Night of the Iguana (1961), Williams continued to write profusely---and constantly to revise his work---but it became more difficult to get productions of his plays and, if they were produced, to win critical or popular acclaim for them. Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for these two and for The Glass Menagerie and The Night of the Iguana. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Suddenly last summer / The milk train doesn't stop here anymore / Small craft warnings
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