The Theatre of Tennessee Williams Volume 1: Battle of Angels, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire

by Tennessee Williams

The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in a matching format the plays of one of America's most influential and innovative dramatists. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes.

Volume 1 leads with Battle of Angels Williams's first produced play (1940), and early version of Orpheus Descending. this is followed by the texts of his first great popular successes: The Glass menagerie (1945) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), which established Williams's reputations once and for all as a genius of the modern American theatre.

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Drama, Classics, Theatre

419 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1971

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

[Noam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three intriguing plays, very different and yet all three are about the same themes: The (im-)possibilities of how people interact with each other. Power, domination, adaptation, love, (sexual) attraction, pain, fear, longing… The stuff life is made of! The plays show life in the south of USA during the 40’s but nothing has changed… It makes me feel like reading all other volumes of ‘The theatre of Tennessee Williams…

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two plays that are among the best ever written and one that would be the best in the oeuvre of most playwrights make for a collection that is well worth owning/reading for anyone interested in drama to any degree. It's also pretty much a perfect primer for Tennessee Williams, as not only do these plays (especially Menagerie and Streetcar) cover the thematic ground (the spectres of mental illness and hysteria that torment and terrorize so many of his characters, homosexuality crops up on the periphery as it often will in future works, marriages and other romantic relationships as something like "psychic warfare," the decay of the South and its culture due to the lingering effects of the original sin of slavery, the compulsion felt by the artist to create, etc.) to which he would return habitually throughout his long and legendary career, but they also have the added bonuses of incorporating elements from the writer's own life (The Glass Menagerie is particularly easy to read as autobiographical) and being some of his earliest completed works. I have all these New Directions volumes of Williams' plays and plan to move chronologically through his output; a number of the plays I've read before, some I've seen adapted for the screen and/or performed for the stage, but many of them will be totally new, and I can't wait to dig in deeper.

[Stella Cunningham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Williams innovation in the realm of theatre when it came to production details and even some plot details. But I struggled with the gap between norms of the time he was writing and those of today. I found the racial segregation and moments of sexual violence shocking and difficult to read.

[Daniel Krolik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Streetcar and Glass Menagerie are what they are. Battle of Angels is an interesting early draft of Orpheus Descending.

[Becca Harmon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Streetcar named desire has its good moments, but overall it is just a mid book.

[abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

good better best

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I reread a Williams play, I imagine it will be the last time -- that I don't need to read the poker scene again or anticipate any gentlemen callers, but I keep returning to them. I suppose I should deduct a star for the crazed melodrama of the third act of "Battle of Angels," in this volume, but letting things get out of hand onstage must be Williams' primary contribution to 20th century theater. The older I get, the more I seem to treasure the moments when a piece gets out of the writer's control -- I find this much preferable to the crushing, mediocre professionalism of writing that is more generally acclaimed.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Containing two classics (The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire) and one earlier work (Battle of Angels) that would be reworked into a later play (Orpheus Descending) and reworked again into a screenplay (The Fugitive Kind), this first volume of eight contains the full script for each play in what is perhaps Williams' greatest era. Interestingly, for all its weaknesses, Battle of Angels--which predates both Menagerie and its successor, Streetcar-- in many ways shows what would go wrong in his plays post-Streetcar and that many of his own tropes were set in stone from the very beginning, even if they wouldn't become obvious (and, arguably, annoying) in his later work.

[j_ay · Rating 5 out of 5]

-Battle of Angels ****o (four stars)
A flop (lasting only 2 weeks) upon it's debut, this play reads rather well (aside from some cringe-worthy racism) and I'm rather surprised nothing has come from it (that I know of), be it revivals or a Hollywood bastardization of it...
-The Glass Menagerie *****
-A Streetcar Named Desire *****

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I studied 'The Glass Menagerie' for my A-levels, and it was a real treat to read it again, along with 'A Streetcar Named Desire' - so powerful! When I read the latter I imagined Marlon Brando's incredible performance the whole time.

[Jose Grateron · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plays were good. I especially liked A Streetcar Named Desire. However, I was expecting something more from this play writer. Not sure exactly what. I plan on checking out the later volumes eventually.

[Bethany · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that this book was really confusing at times and that it could have been more self explanatory.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, powerful for the relatively short length, pretty dark themes for that era.

[Graham Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started to give it four stars, realized it would only be because of how sad it is.

[Keith Gorman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just wanted to read "A Streetcar Named Desire" which was the 3rd play in the volume. Very good dialogue and tension. Enjoyed the experience

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sigh**