Three by Tennessee: Sweet Bird of Youth, The Rose Tattoo, The Night of the Iguana

by Tennessee Williams

Williams, Tennessee, Sweet Bird Of Youth; Rose Tattoo, Night Of The Iguana

Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, Fiction, Theatre, Own, Anthologies

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1976

About the author

Thomas 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

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ROSE TATTOO is one of my favorites! Tennessee Williams is the sultry sultan of my bubble baths!

[Lovely Fortune · Rating 2 out of 5]

I decided I would write this review with my reaction to each play after I finished each one so my reaction would be fresh and untainted by whatever I happened to read afterwards, so this will be divided into sections.

Sweet Bird of Youth

I think Tennessee Williams has such a fantastic way with words. I’ve read three other plays of his, but I was so looking forward to reading more of his stuff this summer and now I have. The foreword to this play explains his desire to write plays about the flaws of humanity, esp. those that he has struggled with at some point or another, but that’s what makes the emotion in his plays so realistic. Even when characters are exaggerated (Princess Kosmonopolis aka Alexandra del Lago), they feel so authentic in their exaggeration. This is a story of searching for youth that is lost, something everyone will battle with at some point, esp. if they are like our two main characters: disappointed in the outcome of their life. I think the ending can be interpreted in many ways since it’s left ambiguous, but that actually almost made the pain more real at the end. Regardless of whether you see the ending as good or bad (in relation to what Williams lays out for the audience), there’s still this somber feeling lingering once you’ve finished.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

The Rose Tattoo

I am not super ecstatic about this play, but as is mentioned in my review above and in some of my updates. I really just love Tennessee Williams. His writing is amazing. This play deals with the inability to move on from the person you love and loving to the point of excess which is not conducive to one’s own well-being. We see Serafina sink into a depression after her husband dies, staying in denial to the fact that her husband was cheating on her, letting herself waste away in her home as she becomes the laughingstock of the neighborhood, lashing out at others, and keeping the ashes of her husband as a constant reminder of him that never goes away. When she gets a new lover, she becomes the way she once was with her husband, falling in love and giving herself to him completely. It is a love without caution once she has decided she wants to be with him, but even when she is with him, he reminds her of her deceased husband. She even comments that he has a similar body to her husband. Even her daughter is somewhat like this with her own boyfriend (of like a few days) who she falls her completely, running away with him even though he is an older man and she is fifteen. Roses are a big symbol in this play, which makes sense lol, but they are constantly there. The daughter’s name is Rosa, the husband’s name is Rosario, the family’s surname is delle Rose, the husband had a rose tattoo, the lover Serafina eventually gets at the end also gets this rose tattoo and has rose oil in his hair. I mean it’s always there. I thought the use of Italian was a bit excessive, while most of it is like basic stuff that you might be able to work out on your own through context and reading the ambiance of the scene, if you aren’t able to do that, I feel like it would take you out of the scene (and also it’s just excessive lol). Overall, not my favorite work of his, but again, he’s just a great writer, so it’s good enough for me on that front, but if you’re just casually trying to read a play, I would say, pick a different one.

Rating: 2 stars

The Night of the Iguana

So this is the play I wrote down on the list of books I wanted to read this summer, but when I found that there was a book with 3 of his plays in one, I decided that it would be cool to just read all 3. (This is how I discovered Eugene O’Neill, another playwright I love and will be reading a play of soon. There was a collection of 3 of his plays, which I HIGHLY enjoyed.) It’s funny because this is the play I was most looking forward to and this one let me down the most. I may need to revisit it, but honestly, I didn’t really like any of the characters. I found most of them to be annoying. Williams definitely packs his stories with symbolism, and I can see what’s there somewhat, but I can’t see what is so significant. Perhaps, because I cannot apply it to my own life or situations I have observed or questions I have thought about, but the symbolism didn’t cut deep with me and so I was never really able to get into this properly.

Rating: 1.5 stars

(Average: 2.3 stars → I will round this down to 2.)

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

While A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are Williams' most popular plays, these Three by Tennessee are also excellent reads. All three feature main characters on the seemingly on the verge of insanity and are grasping for a reality they know deep down is out of reach. For the Sweet Bird of Youth, it's a young man trying to hitch his wagon to the star of an aging Hollywood actress and also reclaim his childhood lover; in The Rose Tattoo, it's a naïve, chaste widow who refuses to believe her late husband had a long-running love affair behind her back; in The Night of Iguana, it's a disgraced priest who struggles to overcome his lust for young women. At the surface, all of these seem like heavy topics--and they are--but Williams does an amazing job at humanizing each of the main characters into flawed protagonists. He accomplishes this with a healthy dose of wit, sarcasm, and emotion, making his protagonists, though imperfect, not nearly as shallow or corrupt as the rest of the plays' characters, so that you sympathize for them.

Admittedly, the brutality of the Southern men in Sweet Bird of Youth still shocks and angers me, even though I know it's just a play. The Rose Tattoo makes you feel pain for the widow when she learns about her deceased husband's secret, but the rekindling of romance in her life is charming. My favorite was the Night of the Iguana. In some ways it reminded me of Malcolm Lowry's prolific novel Under the Volcano, where the deeply flawed but self-aware protagonist shifts in and out of sanity--albeit in Lowry's novel it is of an acholic state--and women in both works are nobly, actually desperately, trying to save the disturbed men. Maybe the exotic, pre-war expat settings in Mexico had something to do with this similarity, too. The female characters in Iguana were also a good relief to the former-priest and made for a superb play, in my opinion, and I'd be interested in seeing the film adaptation starring Richard Burton. So, if I had to pick one of the Three, it would be The Night of the Iguana for sure.

“Oh, God, can’t we stop now? Finally? Please let us. It’s so quiet here, now.” - final line from The Night of the Iguana

[Annabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm no writer, but it I think it's more difficult to write a play than a novel. A play has no omniscient narrator nor protagonist waxing about his feelings. Any sentiment can only be gleaned from the dialogue. And dialogue is what Tennessee Williams does best. Small wonder why his plays end up as movies, and usually, with perfect casting: the roles are so meaty and the conversations so piercing and precise. And eventually, revealing. All three of these plays have their share of high-octane dialogues, propelled by desire, greed, pride, regret, tenderness, and love.

[Elaine C · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m revisiting my bookshelf during covid and always loved TW. The plays seem so dated now but I enjoyed the step back to a time not that long ago. The writing is so colorful you feel transported into their world. I enjoyed Iguana and Sweet Bird over Rose Tattoo.

Tip - Don’t read the theatre cast (If provided) before the story. Read it afterwards. Otherwise you’ll be thinking of the actor/actress the whole play.

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet Bird of Youth - Depressing, but pretty good read.
The Rose Tattoo - not really into it.
The Night of the Iguana - Superb. A few of the characterizations hit close to home, which made them so real.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rose Tattoo basically watching a lasagna golem move and speak

[Evelyn Wilber · Rating 4 out of 5]

My fave was The Night of the Iguana

[Eri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not perfect but fascinating and striking in the way that Williams always is (was).

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

*I think I'll write a review on this book (or on these three plays)since I haven't written one for a while.

I picked up this book when Borders was having its closing sales, because I read The Glass Menagerie in a class and wanted to read his other works.

In the foreword, Tennessee Williams writes:
Last year I thought it might help me as a writer to undertake psychoanalysis and so I did. The analyst, being acquainted with my work and recognizing the psychic wounds expressed in it, asked me, soon after we started, "Why are you so full of hate, anger and envy?" (xi)
(Williams agreed with "anger" and "envy", but contested "hate.")

Knowing this and part of Williams' experiences, I understand where he comes from and how it has influenced his plays. However, despite the topics he addresses (through the characters' aimlessness and depression)in his play, one can't say that he didn't strive or put in effort to create original compositions. His plays are far from sugarcoated, but he does a good job at presenting unadulterated reality.

Sweet Bird of Youth commences on an Easter Sunday. When I read this part, I immediately thought of other books, which mentions Easter Sunday: Faust and Silias Marner too, I believe. The setting seems trite. However, I have not read a play like this one. Chance, the protagonist, is a confused person, who, like Jay Gatsby (from The Great Gatsby...), tries to return to the past to a girl he likes. Meanwhile, he is with a distraught actress nicknamed "Princess" for emotional support... Personally, the play was "okay"; it didn't really attract my attention. I was a neutral reader who didn't grasp the story. I think I get it now. The "Three" are similar to The Glass Menagerie, a sad love story. More mature readers might like it more than I do, but the stories are a bit too depressing for my taste.

The Rose Tattoo has a similar theme, but seems more dynamic. The main character, the Italian widow, who lost her husband, fears that she will lose her only daughter to a sailor. She is a stereotypical Italian women who's not afraid to yell. She tries to recover from her lost, but is insecure that her husband may have cheated on her and this drives her to insanity. Though she does some despicable things, the story was well-developed and the focus on the daughter and mother relationship was very moving in one of the scenes. At least it shows that the mother, Serafina, meant well but was struggling with reality.

The Night of the Iguana was intriguing. I kept asking myself what does the iguana has to do with the story, and in the end, I liked it because the iguana was the symbol of being bounded and being freed. The story emphasizes more on looking for help. The minister, Shannon, who had a nervous breakdown has some personal issues and struggles with self-discipline and self-respect (but would probably not want to admit it). He accompanies Maxine, the manager of a hotel, who recently lost her husband and also has some struggles of her own. It seems like Shannon is in some bad company: gossipy people who cannot sympathize or help him, and people who struggle with their own self-discipline and have no regard for Shannon, who (to complicate matters) has a reprehensible history. In contrast, there is the noble Hannah, who cares for her grandfather, who (she declares) is "ninety-eight years young." Funny, but at first I couldn't tell how old Hannah was. The way she acted made her seem young, but later I found out that the word "spinster" meant "old maid". (Oh, okay. I knew that...)

Perhaps it is the good arrangement of the plays, but the book was enjoyable in the end when it ends with Hannah, who has to endure so much, who helps others, and who willingly accept the reality without making a show out of it. Some parts of the book might have some of us shaking our heads, but it also lures me to write something about it. It's easy read, but one might want to consult the dictionary sometimes to fully understand the play. (-Or not. The choice is yours.)

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm reading (only) "The Night of the Iguana," because I bought the movie version starring Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk. (See my review of "Ava Gardner.") I want to read the Tennessee Williams play before seeing the movie. The part she played, as owner of the Costa Verde hotel, is believed to be one of Ava Gardner's best performances.

I've now finished the play. A bit somber for my taste, but still interesting. I liked the ending. Maxine was not my favorite character in the play (I suppose Hannah was, although I was lukewarm about all three main characters), but I'm looking forward, now, to Ava Gardner's performance in the moovie. Here's a plot summary from Wikipedia:

In 1940s Mexico, an ex-minister, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, has been locked out of his church after characterizing the Occidental image of God as a "senile delinquent," during one of his sermons. Shannon is not de-frocked, but rather institutionalized for a "nervous breakdown."

Some time after his release, Rev. Shannon obtains employment as a tour guide for a second-rate travel agency. Shortly before the opening of the play, Shannon is accused of having committed a statutory rape of a sixteen-year old girl, named Charlotte Goodall, who is accompanying his current group of tourists.

As the curtain rises, Shannon is arriving with a group of women at a cheap hotel on the coast of Mexico that had been managed by his friends Fred and Maxine. The former has recently died, and Maxine Faulk has assumed sole responsibility for managing the establishment.

Shannon, in the middle of another nervous breakdown, tries to manage not only his tour party, who have turned against him for entering into sexual relations with the minor, but also Maxine, who is interested in him for purely carnal reasons. Adding to this chaotic scenario, a strangely virginal spinster, Hannah Jelkes, appears with her moribund grandfather, Nonno, who, despite his severe "decrepitude", is in the midst of composing his last poem.

Hannah, who barely scrapes by as traveling painter and sketch artist, soon finds herself at the end of her rope, that is to say, at Maxine's mercy. Shannon, who wields considerable influence over Maxine, offers Hannah shelter for the night. The play's main axis is the development of the deeply human bond between Hannah and Shannon, whose names even resemble each other.

Like the Iguana, captured and tied to a pole by the Mexicans in the play, they have come to the end of their rope. This metaphor is intensified when Shannon tears at his golden cross on his neck, lacerating himself, as if to free himself from its constraints.

Minor characters in the play include: a), a group of German tourists whose Nazi marching songs paradoxically function to lighten the heavier themes of the play, and yet cast us deeper into human suffering as they remind us of the horrors of World War II, b) the Mexican "boys" Maxine employs to help run the hotel who comically ignore her laconic commands, c) and Judith Fellowes, the "butch" vocal teacher charged with Charlotte's care during the trip. The latter is one of Williams few overtly lesbian characters (see A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Williams, in which a love triangle among three women is the play's sole interest).

[BurgendyA · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Tennessee Williams so much. He is my ultimate favorite playwrite. His work always amazes me.

These three plays are wonderful. I enjoyed reading them and would recommend them to anyone. Out of the 3 my top faves was Sweet Bird of Youth.


The movies aren't bad. Check them out if you'll like,but I'd highly suggest you to read the books first. =)~

[John Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I waited too long between reading and writing review to have anything particularly meaningful to say. But I can say that, since these plays are all similar in theme, the last play seems boring and repetitive.

Also, Sweet Bird of Youth, in my humble opinion, may be the best Williams play.

[Mstrutzelstraza]

Sure, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Streetcar Named Desire are more well known, but give these plays a chance. They are great reads.

[Irus · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love tennessee!

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

yeah, I'm a fan of southern melodrama.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't really pick my favorite Williams play, but Night of the Iguana is nearly it. The room just got a little more humid. Do I smell cigarette smoke?

[Opskar01 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only read Sweet bird of youth--I say read night of the iguana instead

[Susan Sherwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed re-reading these plays by Tennessee Williams. Having read The Rose Tattoo again, I wish I had more knowledge of Italian.

[Jason]

Maybe they should rename this "Two Racist Plays, and Another One". Entertaining nonetheless.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite thing about this collection was the stage directions! What a vision Tennessee had for his work on stage. So descriptive.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed these. Night of the Iguana probably my favorite of the three.

[Camilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

"the night of the iguana" is the standout. also a really good movie.

[Turandot · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something at once wildly entertaining and tragically human about Mr. Williams's plays.

[Jovanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of plays is wonderful, I especially loved sweet bird of youth.