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‘Tennessee Williams's mordantly funny and deeply troubled
meditation on the desperate dismay of ageing and the iniquities of
racial bigotry.’ INDEPENDENT ‘It’s a wonderfully weird play,
starting claustrophobic, losing intensity as it introduces the
locals… then regrouping for a devastating second half… This
unruly, unforgettable play takes its unpredictable course to
something that makes you feel afresh our powerlessness against
time.’ THE TIMES When Chance Wayne left the small town of St.
Cloud, he did so with the ambition of being an actor: now, many
years later, he returns as a gigolo and the companion of faded
movie star Alexandra del Lago. But can Chance convince the town he
did actually make it big and win over his childhood sweetheart? Or
will the mistakes of his past punish him still? Sweet Bird of Youth
is Tennessee Williams's 1959 Broadway hit that explores the social
and political climate of 1950s America, at a time when sexual
freedom was a critical issue. This edition includes an introduction
by Alison Walls that explores the play's production history as well
as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar
Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between
fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois
and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes
an introduction by Arthur Miller. 'I have always depended on the
kindness of strangers' Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is
adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her
sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her
delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude,
brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent
collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to
crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of
happiness. Tennessee Williams's steamy and shocking landmark drama,
recreated as the immortal film starring Marlon Brando, is one of
the most influential plays of the twentieth century. Tennessee
Williams (1911-1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi. When his
father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis
some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to
settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression
and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe
company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings
writing. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play
Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955.
Among his many other plays Penguin have published The Glass
Menagerie (1944), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), The Night of the Iguana (1961),
and Small Craft Warnings (1972). If you enjoyed A Streetcar Named
Desire, you might like The Glass Menagerie, also available in
Penguin Modern Classics. 'Lyrical and poetic and human and
heartbreaking and memorable and funny' Francis Ford Coppola,
director of The Godfather 'One of the greatest American plays'
Observer
This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess
Rowen, Visiting Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US,
which looks in particular at the play's treatment of rape,
vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to
Williams's own family), sexuality and sexual desire. A Streetcar
Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional
values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty
running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged,
aggressive materialism of the new world. Through the vividly
characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking
refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal
brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his
sense of the South's past as still active and often destructive in
modern America. METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT EDITIONS are expertly
annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and
classic repertoires. A well as the complete text of the play
itself, this volume contains: * A chronology of the play and the
playwright's life and work * An introductory discussion of the
social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play
was originally conceived and created * A succinct overview of the
creation processes followed and subsequent performance history of
the piece * An analysis of, and commentary on, some of the major
themes and specific issues addressed by the text * A bibliography
of suggested primary and secondary materials for further study
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Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird
Tennessee Williams; Edited by Jonathan Maberry; Contributions by Hailey Piper, Robert E Howard, R. L. Stine, …
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The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic
plays in classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix
of boy and girl parts. This play depicts the conflict between a
fading Southern belle and the brash lower-class society of her
sister's family.
A sizzling drama of desire, avarice and deception set in the
American Deep South, Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is
published in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Big Daddy' Pollitt, the
richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to
celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday. His two sons have returned home
for the occasion: Gooper, his wife and children, Brick, an ageing
football hero who has turned to drink, and his feisty wife Maggie.
As the hot summer evening unfolds, the veneer of happy family life
and Southern gentility gradually slips away as unpleasant truths
emerge and greed, lies, jealousy and suppressed sexuality threaten
to reach boiling point. Made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor
and Paul Newman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a masterly portrayal of
family tensions and individuals trapped in prisons of their own
making. Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in Columbus,
Mississippi. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his
family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found
it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college
during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a
clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years,
spending the evenings writing. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship
in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have
published The Glass Menagerie (1944), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), The Night of
the Iguana (1961), and Small Craft Warnings (1972). If you enjoyed
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, you might like Williams's The Glass
Menagerie, also published in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Tennessee
Williams will live as long as drama itself ... he is, quite simply,
indispensable' Peter Shaffer, author of Equus
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The Glass Menagerie (Paperback)
Tennessee Williams; Edited by E. Browne; Introduction by Robert B. Ray
1
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Tennessee Williams's evocation of loneliness and lost love, The
Glass Menagerie is one of his most powerful and moving plays. This
Penguin Modern Classics edition includes a new introduction by
Robert Bray. Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts
herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in
Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son
Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and
escape from his mother's suffocating embrace, while Laura, her shy
crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda
is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the
long-awaited gentleman caller does arrive, Laura's romantic
illusions are crushed. Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in
Columbus, Mississippi. When his father, a travelling salesman,
moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his
sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered
college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to
take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two
years, spending the evenings writing. He received a Rockefeller
Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin
have published The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire
(1947), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet
Bird of Youth (1959), The Night of the Iguana (1961), and Small
Craft Warnings (1972). If you enjoyed The Glass Menagerie, you
might like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, also available in Penguin Modern
Classics. 'Tennessee Williams will live as long as drama itself'
Peter Shaffer, author of Equus
This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Daniel
Ciba, which looks in particular at the play as a piece of realism
or experimentalism and considers the play through the lens of Queer
Identity. The introduction includes discussion of very recent
revivals and adaptations of the play across the world. The Glass
Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' first great popular success and an
autobiographical play about his mother and sister, launched the
brilliant and controversial career of this ground-breaking American
playwright. Set in St Louis during the depression era of the 1930s,
it is the poignant drama of a family's gradual disintegration,
under pressure both from outside and within. METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT
EDITIONS are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from
the modern and classic repertoires. A well as the complete text of
the play itself, this volume contains: · A chronology of the play
and the playwright’s life and work · an introductory discussion
of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which
the play was originally conceived and created · a succinct
overview of the creation processes followed and subsequent
performance history of the piece · an analysis of, and commentary
on, some of the major themes and specific issues addressed by the
text · a bibliography of suggested primary and secondary materials
for further study.
A friendship struck in 1942 would last for forty-one years through
critical acclaim and rejection, commercial success and failure,
manic highs, bouts of depression, and serious and not-so-serious
liaisons. Tennessee Williams's and James Laughlin's letters provide
a window into the literary history of the mid-twentieth century.
Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the
brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent
lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the
legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been
the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne
Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres
around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the
author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions
Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar
Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review,
reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New
York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after
telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet
desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply
and universally." This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes
Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling
writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of
Williams's own "Production Notes." The cover features the classic
line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New
Directions edition.
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The Rose Tattoo (Paperback)
Tennessee Williams; Introduction by John Patrick Shanley; Contributions by Jack Barbera
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R415
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The Rose Tattoo is larger than life--a fable, a Greek tragedy, a
comedy, a melodrama--it is a love letter from Tennessee Williams to
anyone who has ever been in love or ever will be. Professional
widow and dressmaker Serafina delle Rosa has withdrawn from the
world, locking away her heart and her sixteen-year-old daughter
Rosa. Then one day a man with the sexy body of her late Sicilian
husband and the face of a village idiot, Mangiacavallo (Italian for
"eat a horse"), stumbles into her life and clumsily unlocks
Serafina's fiery anger, sense of betrayal, pride, wit, passion, and
eventually her capacious love. The original production of The Rose
Tattoo won Tony Awards for best play and for the stars, Eli Wallach
and Maureen Stapleton. Anna Magnani received the Academy Award as
Best Actress for the 1955 film version. This edition of The Rose
Tattoo has an Introduction by playwright John Patrick Shanley, the
author's original foreword, the one-act The Dog Enchanted by the
Divine View that was the germ for the play, and an essay by noted
Tennessee Williams scholar Jack Barbera.
‘Williams’s favourite among his plays, [Cat on a Hot Tin Roof]
is perhaps his most impassioned and articulate statement on human
isolation, the wrenching problems of communication between people
and the ways in which death defines life.’ NEW YORK TIMES In Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof, a Southern family meet to celebrate 'Big Daddy'
Pollitt's 65th birthday. But as the party unfolds, the facade of a
happy family gathering is fractured by sexual frustration,
repressed love and greed in the light of their father's impending
death. This edition includes a commentary by Benjamin Hudson, which
explores the major themes of the play, including illness and
mortality; white supremacy through the plantation setting;
mendacity and 'fake news'; alcoholism and addiction; as well as
sexuality, womanhood and mid-century notions of masculinity. It
draws attention to the context of the play, including the cultural,
social and political landscape of the Mississippi Delta and St.
Louis; the first-hand witnessing of Black life in the South;
homosexuality and outsider sympathy; and American conservatism and
the idealised 1950s family. It also delves into recent productions
and adaptations of the play, including the Bollywood and Antoine
Fuqua film adaptations.
York Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to
English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely
updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate
students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes
Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range
of critical perspectives and wider contexts.
This series of plays for the 11-16 age range offers contemporary
drama and new editions of classic plays. The series has been
developed to support classroom teaching and to meet the
requirements of the National Curriculum Key Stages 3 and 4. The
plays are suitable for classroom reading and performance; many have
large casts and an equal mix of parts for boys and girls. Each play
includes strategies and activities to introduce and use the plays
in the classroom. "The Glass Menagerie" tells the story of Tom, who
is frustrated in his job and distressed at home by the mental
withdrawal of his crippled sister. Both of them are intrigued by a
set of glass figures. There are four parts, two male and two
female.
In celebration of the Tennessee Williams centennial in 2011, The
Library of America presents its acclaimed two-volume edition of his
plays in a collector's boxed set. Gathering thirty-two works
written from the 1930s to the 1980s, this collection contains all
the essential dramatic works of the playwright who transformed the
American stage. The first volume opens with the rediscovered early
plays, Spring Storm and Not About Nightingales, and contains such
classics as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose
Tattoo, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as well as a selection of one
acts. The second volume includes Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last
Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth, Period of Adjustment, The Night of the
Iguana, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Out Cry, and A Lovely
Sunday for Creve Coeur. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent
nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our
nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently
in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library
of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date,
authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature
cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on
premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that
continue to have the same power and impact as when they first
appeared-57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams'
A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously
recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed
over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley
Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica
Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of
Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights
of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest
American stage director of the '40s and '50s. Who better than
America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary
Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck
American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's
rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue,
sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and
valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive
new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live
In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.
Reality and fantasy are interwoven with terrifying power as two
actors on tour brother and sister find themselves deserted by the
trope in a decrepit "state theatre in an unknown state." Faced
(perhaps) by an audience expecting a performance, they enact "The
Two-Character Play" an illusions within an illusion, and "out cry"
from isolation, panic and fear. "I think it is my most beautiful
play since Streetcar," Tennessee Williams said, "and I've never
stopped working on it....It is a cri de coeur, but then all
creative work, all life, in a sense is a cri de coeur." In the
course of its evolution, several earlier versions of The
Two-Character Play have been produced. The first of them was
presented in 1967 in London and Chicago and brought out in 1969 by
New Directions in a signed limited edition. The next, staged in
1973 in New York under the title Out Cry, was published by New
Directions in 1973 The third version (New York, 1975), again titled
The Two-Character Play, is the one Tennessee Williams wished to
include in New Directions' The Theatre of Tennessee Williams
series. It is this version which is presented in this ND
paperback."
From the master twentieth-century playwright Tennessee Williams-an
adaptation of Chekhov's The Sea Gull, never before available to the
general trade. The Notebook of Trigorin is faithful to Chekhov's
story of longing and unrequited love. Set on a provincial Russian
Estate, its peaceful environs offer stark contrast to the turbulent
lives of its characters. Constantine, a young writer, must compete
for the attention of his mother, a self-obsessed, often comical
aging actress, Madame Arkadina, and his romantic ideal, Nina. His
rival for both women is Trigorin, an established author bound to
Arkadina by her patronage of his work, and attracted to Nina by her
beauty. Trigorin cannot keep himself from consuming everything of
value in Constantine's life. Only in the final scenes do all
discover that the price for love and fragility can be horribly
high. But if the words in The Notebook of Trigorin are essentially
Chekhov's, the voice belongs firmly to Tennessee Williams. The
dialogue resonates with echoes of the themes Williams developed as
his signatures-compassion for the artistic soul and its
vulnerability in the face of the world's "successfully practiced
duplicity" (Act I).
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (CD)
Tennessee Williams; Performed by Joss Ackland, Gemma Jones, Alison Steadman
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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 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.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is vintage Tennessee Williams.
Published in 1950, his first novel was acclaimed by Gore Vidal as
"splendidly written, precise, short, complete, and fine." It is the
story of a wealthy, fiftyish American widow recently a famous stage
beauty, but now "drifting." The novel opens soon after her
husband's death and her retirement from the theatre, as Mrs. Stone
tries to adjust to her aimless new life in Rome. She is adjusting,
too, to aging. ("The knowledge that her beauty was lost had come
upon her recently and it was still occasionally forgotten.") With
poignant wit and his own particular brand of relish, Williams
charts her drift into an affair with a cruel young gigolo: "As
compelling, as fascinating, and as technically skillful as his
play" (Publishers Weekly).
Loneliness, sexual tension and the need for human kindness pervade
these three plays by Tennessee Williams, as their characters rage
against personal demons and the modern world. In 'Sweet Bird of
Youth', a drifter, Chance Wayne, returns to his home town with an
ageing movie actress in search of the girl he loved in his youth,
but with terrible, violent results. 'Period of Adjustment' tells
the story of two young newlyweds who visit the husband's old army
friend on Christmas Eve after unsuccessfully consummating their
marriage, and unleash forbidden passion, while in 'The Night of the
Iguana' a diverse group of people, including a disturbed
ex-minister and a troubled spinster, are thrown together in an
isolated Mexican hotel for one eventful night.
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Vieux Carre (Paperback)
Tennessee Williams; Introduction by Robert B. Ray
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R380
Discovery Miles 3 800
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The drama takes it form from the shifting scenes of memory, and
Williams's surrogate self invites us to focus, in turn, on the
various inhabitants or his dilapidated rooming house in the Vieux
Carre: the comically desperate landlady, Mrs. Wire; Jane, a
properly brought-up young woman from New York making at last grab
at pleasure with Tye, the vulgar but appealing strip-joint barker;
two decayed gentlewomen politely starving in the garret; and the
dying painter Nightingale, who tries to teach the young writer
something about love--both of the body and of the heart. This is a
play about the education of the artist, and education in loneliness
and despair, in giving and not giving, but most of all in seeing,
hearing, feeling, and learning that "writers are shameless spies,"
who pay dearly for their knowledge and who cannot forget. Building
on two decades of Williams scholarship since Vieux Carre was
originally published, Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams
Annual Review, has provided a new introduction for this edition,
giving the most authoritative account yet of its background and
genesis."
The greatest playwright of the American South, Tennessee Williams
used his talent throughout his life to create brief plays exploring
many of the themes that dominated his best-known works. Here,
thirteen never-before-published one-act dramas reveal some of his
most poignant and hilarious characters. From the indefatigable,
witty and tough drag queens of And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of
Queens to the disheartened poet Mister Paradise, and the
extravagant mistress in The Pink Bedroom, these are tales of
isolated figures struggling against a cruel world, who refuse to
lose sight of their dreams.
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