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Orpheus Descending and Suddenly Last Summer
Two of Tennessee Williams's most revered dramas in a single paperback edition for the first time. Orpheus Descending is a love story, a plea for spiritual and artistic freedom, as well as a portrait of racism and intolerance. When charismatic drifter Valentine Xavier arrives in a Mississippi Delta town with his guitar and snakeskin jacket, he becomes a trigger for hatred and a magnet for three outcast storekeeper Lady Torrance, “lewd vagrant” Carol Cutrere, and religious visionary Vee Talbot. Suddenly Last Summer , described by its author as a “short morality play,” has become one of his most notorious works due in no small part to the film version starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift that shocked audiences in 1959. A menacing tale of madness, jealousy, and denial,the horrors in Suddenly Last Summer build to a heart-stopping conclusion. With perceptive new introductions by playwright Martin Sherman ― he reframes Orpheus Descending in a political context and explores the psychology and sensationalism surrounding Suddenly Last Summer ― this volume also offers Williams’s related essay, “The Past, the Present, and the Perhaps,” and a chronology of the playwright’s life and works.
208 pages, Paperback
First published December 4, 2012
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About the author
Tennessee Williams
753 books3,661 followersThomas 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 9, 2017
Williams most intriguing play
Even if you like Tennessee Williams, you may not be familiar with either Orpheus Descending or Suddenly Last Summer. Neither is one of his better-known plays, nor were they often produced.
While I can't adequately review Orpheus Descending, I have been intrigued by Suddenly Last Summer since I saw the movie version starring Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. I've seen the movie several times, but had not read the play.
Descriptions of the screen version often say it glossed over the more graphic nature of the play, and that is so. The movie hinted at the bizarre nature of the mother-son relationship and the final death scene of the son. I'm sure that was how it got past the studios reluctance to produce it at all.
The play is, in some ways, more direct, but there were no real surprises. It is still the story of a bizarre and unhealthy parent-child relationship. When the mother can no longer travel, her deceased husband's niece goes in her stead. The niece tries to play her part and keep the willful man from his own worst proclivities. When she fails, he moves deeper into debauchery, hinted to be indiscriminate sex with strangers at a Spanish seaside resort. He is killed by a band of naked youths. It is a gruesome death.
The niece is disturbed and tries to tell what happened, ending up in an asylum in New Orleans, where her aunt tries to have her lobotomized in order to deny the nature of her beloved son's last summer and death. As always, how things look is more important to her than how they truly are. Fortunately we are left to believe she fails at her plan.
What I see in this play is what Williams does best - give us a view into the steamy heat of the South and the even steamier, and often twisted, motivations and dealings of those who live there. He was always true to his own views of human nature.
Even if you like Tennessee Williams, you may not be familiar with either Orpheus Descending or Suddenly Last Summer. Neither is one of his better-known plays, nor were they often produced.
While I can't adequately review Orpheus Descending, I have been intrigued by Suddenly Last Summer since I saw the movie version starring Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. I've seen the movie several times, but had not read the play.
Descriptions of the screen version often say it glossed over the more graphic nature of the play, and that is so. The movie hinted at the bizarre nature of the mother-son relationship and the final death scene of the son. I'm sure that was how it got past the studios reluctance to produce it at all.
The play is, in some ways, more direct, but there were no real surprises. It is still the story of a bizarre and unhealthy parent-child relationship. When the mother can no longer travel, her deceased husband's niece goes in her stead. The niece tries to play her part and keep the willful man from his own worst proclivities. When she fails, he moves deeper into debauchery, hinted to be indiscriminate sex with strangers at a Spanish seaside resort. He is killed by a band of naked youths. It is a gruesome death.
The niece is disturbed and tries to tell what happened, ending up in an asylum in New Orleans, where her aunt tries to have her lobotomized in order to deny the nature of her beloved son's last summer and death. As always, how things look is more important to her than how they truly are. Fortunately we are left to believe she fails at her plan.
What I see in this play is what Williams does best - give us a view into the steamy heat of the South and the even steamier, and often twisted, motivations and dealings of those who live there. He was always true to his own views of human nature.
May 12, 2025
Read Orpheus Descending for my Comparative Mythology class and found it an intriguing modern day adaptation of the original myth. Suddenly Last Summer was also great but something about it didn’t agree with me.
August 2, 2020
Orpheus Descending in a word—heavy
September 15, 2025
Eh, probably my least favorite Williams’ plays. Not really a sell or a hook that kept me interested in either of them.
Read
October 17, 2025Actually finished this a month ago but I only read one of the plays, counting it still though
December 16, 2014
Tennessee Williams is really a masterful dramatist. These two plays somehow feel rather different from Cat/Streetcar, because the dialogue and action are structured rather differently - rather than the rapid, highly-interactive dialogue of those two more well-known plays, Orpheus and Suddenly give more time to fewer characters, which actually allows the audience to delve deeper into the psyche of the main characters. Very vivid and poignant, especially Orpheus! I really like the attention that Williams pays to developing the emotional connection between characters, such as Lady and Val in Orpheus Descending.
December 17, 2015
"Orpheus Descending" is great.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews