Battle of Angels

by Tennessee Williams

As in its later, and substantially re-written version (entitled ORPHEUS DESCENDING), the play deals with the arrival of a virile young drifter, Val Xavier, in a sleepy, small town in rural Mississippi. He takes a job in the dry goods store run by a love-starved woman whose husband lies dying upstairs, and his smoldering animal magnetism soon draws out her latent sexual passion. As it must, their liaison sets tongues wagging, and invokes the scorn and jealousy of the townspeople, male and female alike. And, as the play probes ever more deeply and poignantly into the troubled psyches of its protagonists, a sense of inevitable tragedy grows, leading on to a denouement of overwhelming and chilling intensity.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

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

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Battle Of Angels

Just after Christmas in 1940, the Theatre Guild premiered "Battle of Angels" in Boston. It was the first commercially produced play of Tennessee Williams. Margaret Webster directed while Hollywood actress Miriam Hopkins played the leading woman role of Myrna and Wesley Addy was finally cast as the leading man, Val. The debut was far from auspicious. In the last act, a general store burns down. During the first performance, the burning got out of control filling the theater with smoke and causing the audience to head for the exits. The reviews of the play were poor with the play criticized as immoral and vulgar. The production closed after two weeks with Williams told to rewrite his play. When he received the news, Williams lamented that he had put his heart into the play. Director Webster replied: "You must not wear your heart on your sleeve for daws to peck at"; while another person at the meeting remarked that Williams, at least, was not "out of pocket".

This early play is an ambitious, sprawling work in three acts which John Lahr describes in his biography "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh" as a "personal, opaque, overwrought, somewhat absurd parable about a dying penny-pinching ogre of a husband (Jabe), a dutiful, desolate wife (Myra), trapped by desolate circumstances into a humiliating, loveless marriage, and a free-spirited young bundle of sexual charisma (Val), whose exciting presence rattles the cage of propriety in the pious, hidebound rural community of Two Rivers, Mississippi." Williams described the play as his first full attempt to "fuse lyricism and realism". He projected "the violent symbols of my adolescence. It was a synthesis of the two parts of my life already passed through."

In the play, a highly sexual young aspiring writer wearing a gaudy snakeskin jacket,, Val, wanders into a small Mississippi town. Myrna, whose husband is dying of cancer, gives Val a job in her general store, and the new help soon proves irresistible to several of the repressed women in the town, including Myrna. A wealthy, sexually loose young woman, Cassandra, also is attracted to Val, as is the wife of the county sheriff, Vee, who paints religiously inspired portraits, including, ultimately, a portrait of Val that resembles Jesus. A mysterious "woman from Waco" arrives in town in search of her former lover. Val's exhuberance, imagination, and sexuality quickly prove too much for the town and for Jabe. The jealous mortally ill husband kills his wife, Val in burned and lynched, at least two other characters meet violent ends. This is a romantic play of the type that would soon make Williams famous and it shows his own unique blending of religious, spiritual themes with themes of sensuality.

Williams was told to rewrite "Battle of Angels" and he did so over a period of 17 years. In 1957, Williams' play "Orpheus Descending" premiered on Broadway to a chilly reception. It tells essentially the same story as did "Battle of Angels" but, according to Williams, was about 75 percent rewritten.Among other changes, Val becomes a guitar-playing musician rather than a writer. "Orpheus Descending" was revived in 1987 in a production starring Vanessa Redgrave and it has been filmed twice. The first film, "The Fugitive Kind" starred Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani while Redgrave was featured in the second film. Williams wrote explanatory essays, "The History of a Play" for Battle of Angels and "The Past, the Present, and the Perhaps" for "Orpheus Descending" to explain the histories of each play and their relationship to one another.

With the 1957 "Orpheus Descending", the original "Battle of Angels" is rarely presented on its own. In fact, Williams final version of the play differs from the version disastrously presented in Boston. The play is still worth reading in its own right as a work of a young writer that already displays many of his characteristic themes. It is also valuable to see how Williams' work changed between "Battle of Angels" and "Orpheus Descending". Both plays and their accompanying essays are included in the two-volume Library of America compilation of the plays of Tennessee Williams. "Battle of Angels" is in the first volume while "Orpheus Descending" begins the second.

Robin Friedman

[Jojo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: In a small town, a drifter named Val comes into town and finds himself a job working in a local shop that is run by a woman named Myra. She has a husband who is ill whom she takes care of. There is something about this interloper that seems to attract everyone in the town. One of these people is a somewhat aristocratic woman named Sandra who seems to have a bit of a drinking problem. Myra meanwhile tries to deny her attraction for Val but eventually gives in. Val has told her how he is wanted in Texas for rape (though he claims the woman claimed that out of spite and the allegation is false). Myra tells Val she is pregnant. Cops arrive with the woman from Texas looking for Val. Myra want to run off with Val but he says he always travels alone. Jabe (Myra's husband) manages to make his way downstairs to the shop with a gun and shoots Myra but since she was on the phone with the police (telling them how Val was robbing the shop), he says they will believe it was Val who killed her.
The epilogue reveals how the townspeople attacked Val in the end and how Sandra was in a car accident, driving off the bridge that was flooded.
Review: I think it took a little bit to get into this one but overall I did enjoy it. There were a lot of characters which made it a bit difficult to keep track of. I do just generally enjoy Tennessee Williams' style though when it comes to plays.
Grade: B-

[peyton]

I found this one tricky to get into, but once I was in, I was IN. Very excited to read Orpheus Descending to see how Williams to continue developing this piece - “But I have never written a play that I thought was completed and I don't think I ever will. There is too much to say and not enough time to say it. Nor is there power enough.”

Really love some of Myra’s text and the wittiness of the dialogue between characters. “Since then all decency's left me, I've stood like a woman naked with nothing but love—love, love.”

[G. Pug · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really enjoyable play with relatable dialogue. Characters were caricature-esque at times and some inclusions are puzzling. Regardless, it was a fun read and lives gorgeously on the stage when done well.

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It really is amazing to me how good Williams was with dialogue so early in his playwrighting career

[Junko · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tennessee Williams' first production that sets out the characters we see in his later plays: the manly man and the young woman seeking adventure or an escape through love or its ideal. It's not that his female characters are uninteresting, it's that their strengths are constrained to the expectations of the period he writes in, it seems. They are Southern belles with a slight neurosis and an inability to overcome their circumstances as a result of their own dependence. But I'm only basing this review on three plays I've read of his.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seeing as this play was rewritten into Orpheus Descending, maybe my rating is not accurate. But besides this little fallacy, I really enjoyed Battle of Angels because it sucked me in for sure. I was genuinely interested in the action of this small town drama; I have no doubt that this is a type of play that I should be seeing many more times from Williams.

Other than that, I don't think I have much to say in regards to this play.

[Roland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to believe this was Williams' first major play, as so much of his trademarks are right here. It's an early version of Orpheus Descending, but it's also very strong with memorable dialog. Val seems like a test run for Streetcar's Stanley. I haven't read Orpheus Descending yet so I can't compare the two, but it's a very solid play and well worth the read.

[Isadora Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly my favorite Tennessee Williams play.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Orpheus Descending, and this is an early version of that play. It's been a little while since I read OD, so I can't really comment on the comparisons, but Battle of Angels rocked too!