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 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.
We stopped near the Duelling Oaks at the end of Esplanade Street … Stopped! – I said, ‘What for?’ – He didn’t answer, just struck a match in the car to light a cigarette in the car and I looked at him in the car and I knew ‘what for’! – I think I got out of the car before he got out of the car, and we walked through the wet grass to the great misty oaks as if somebody was calling us for help there! [Pause. The subdued, toneless bird-cries in the garden turn to a single bird-song.] DOCTOR: After
all – shined his shoes or called taxis for him … Each day the crowd was bigger, noisier, greedier! – Sebastian began to be frightened. – At last we stopped going out there … DOCTOR: And then? After that? After you quit going out to the public beach? CATHARINE: Then one day, a few days after we stopped going out to the beach – it was one of those white blazing days in Cabeza de Lobo, not a blazing hot blue one but a blazing hot white one. DOCTOR: Yes? CATHARINE: We had a late lunch at one of
playing softly.] BLACKIE: – ‘The Earth Is –’? CHRIS: ‘A Wheel in a Great Big Gambling Casino’. I made it on hinges, it has to be unfolded before it’s hung up. I think you’d better hang it up before you show it to her, if you don’t mind, and in a place where it will turn in the wind, so it will make a – more impressive – impression … – And this is for you, this book? [He hands a book to her.] BLACKIE: Poems? CHRIS: It’s a verse-adaptation I made of the writings of a Swami, a great Hindu
was about the outcome. MRS VENABLE: Yes. DOCTOR: The patient was a young girl regarded as hopeless and put in the Drum – MRS VENABLE: Yes. DOCTOR: The name for the violent ward at Lion’s View because it looks like the inside of a drum with very bright lights burning all day and all night. – So the attendants can see any change of expression or movement among the inmates in time to grab them if they’re about to attack. After the operation I stayed with the girl, as if I’d delivered a child
reality, disturbs another one’s sense of reality – I know how mixed up this – MRS GOFORTH: Not a bit, clear as a bell, so keep on, y’haven’t lost my attention. CHRIS: Being able to talk: wonderful! – When one person’s sense of reality seems too – disturbingly different from another person’s, uh – MRS GOFORTH: Sense of reality: Continue. CHRIS: Well, he’s – avoided! Not welcome! It’s – that simple… And – yesterday in Naples, I suddenly realized that I was in that situation. [Turns to the
