Suddenly Last Summer is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, written in New York in 1957. It opened off Broadway on 7 January 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams' one-acts, Something Unspoken. The presentation of the two plays was given the overall title Garden District, but Suddenly Last Summer is now more often performed alone. Williams said he thought the play "perhaps the most poetic" he had written, and Harold Bloom ranks it among the best examples of the playwright's lyricism.
Plot
1936, in the Garden District of New Orleans. 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. During the course of their conversation, she offers to make a generous donation to support the doctor's psychiatric research if he will perform a lobotomy on Catharine, her niece, who has been confined to St. Mary, a private mental asylum, at her expense since returning to America. Mrs. Venable is eager to "shut her up" once and for all, as she continues to "babble" about Sebastian's violent death and "smash" her son's reputation by hinting at his homosexuality. 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 in probate until she is satisfied, something Catharine's family can't afford to challenge. But the doctor injects Catharine with a truth 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, and how he was set upon, mutilated, and partially "devoured" by a mob of starving children in the street. Mrs. Venable launches herself at Catharine but she is prevented from striking her with her cane and taken off stage, screaming "cut this hideous story from her brain!". Far from being convinced of her insanity, however, the doctor believes her story could in fact be true.
Analysis
From its first page, the script is rich in symbolic detail open to many interpretations. The "mansion of Victorian Gothic style" immediately connects the play with the literature of Southern Gothic, with which it shares many characteristics. Sebastian's "jungle-garden", with its "violent" colours and noises of "beasts, serpents, and birds... of savage nature" introduces the images of predation that punctuate much of the play's dialogue. These have been interpreted variously as implying the violence latent in Sebastian himself; depicting modernity's vain attempts to "contain" its atavistic impulses; and standing for a bleak "Darwinian" vision of the world, equating "the primeval past and the ostensibly civilised present". The Venus flytrap mentioned in the play's opening speech can be read as portraying Sebastian as the "pampered" son, or "hungry for flesh"; as portraying the "seductive deadliness" concealed beneath Mrs. Venable's "civilized veneer", while she "clings desperately to life" in her "hothouse" home; as a joint "metaphor for Violet and Sebastian, who consume and destroy the people around them"; as symbolising nature's cruelty, like the "flesh-eating birds" of the Galapagos; as symbolising "a primitive state of desire", and so on. Williams referred to symbols as "the natural language of drama" and "the purest language of plays". The ambiguity arising from the abundance of symbolism is therefore not unfamiliar to his audiences. What poses a unique difficulty to critics of Suddenly Last Summer is the absence of its protagonist. 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". In spite of its difficulties, however, the play's recurrent images of predation and cannibalism 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". 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 to express my repulsion with this characteristic of man, the way people use each other without conscience... people devour each other.
Adaptations and productions
1958 original production
The original production of the play was performed off Broadway on 7 January 1958, along with Something Unspoken, under the collective title of Garden District, at the York Theatre on First Avenue in New York, staged by the York Playhouse with lighting design by Lee Watson. Anne Meacham won an Obie Award for her performance as Catharine. 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 stage set designed by Robert Soule and the costumes by Stanley Simmons. Incidental music was by Ned Rorem.
The play was adapted for BBCtelevision in 1993 under the direction of Royal National Theatre head Richard Eyre, and starring Maggie Smith, Rob Lowe, Richard E. Grant, and Natasha Richardson. It aired in America on PBS as an episode of Great Performances. Smith was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie. According to Lowe, his personal driver during the production of the telefilm was also the personal driver for Montgomery Clift on the 1959 film.
1995 Broadway debut
The play made its Broadway debut in 1995. It was performed together with Something Unspoken, the other one-act play that it originally appeared with under the title Garden District. It was presented by the Circle in the Square Theatre. The cast included Elizabeth Ashley, Victor Slezak and Celia Weston.
The play was part of the 2015 season at the Sydney Theatre Company. Director Kip Williams blended live camera work with traditional stage craft in a production starring Eryn Jean Norvill as Catherine and Robyn Nevin as Venable. The production received three nominations at 2015 Helpmann 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 the Théâtre de l'Odéon in March and 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.
