Tennessee
Williams
A
Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays
Penguin
Classics, Paperback, [2000].
8vo. 313 pp. Contains The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). Author's
Foreword to the last, 1959. Edited by E. Martin Browne.
The
Glass Menagerie first published, 1945.
A
Streetcar Named Desire first published, 1947.
Sweet
Bird of Youth first published, 1959.
This collection first
published, 1962.
Reprinted in Penguin
Classics, 2000.
Contents
Sweet
Bird of Youth
Foreword*
The Characters
Synopsis of Scenes
Act I, Scenes 1-2
Act II, Scenes 1-2
Act III, Scene 1
First presented at the Martin
Beck Theatre, New York, on 10 March 1959 by Cheryl Crawford:
Chance Wayne - Paul Newman
The Princess Kosmonopolis
[Alexandra Del Lago] - Geraldine Page
Boss Finley - Sidney Blackmer
Tom Junior - Rip Torn
Miss Lucy - Madeleine
Sherwood
Heavenly Finley - Diana
Hyland
The Heckler - Charles Tyner
Directed by Elia Kazan.
*First published in the New York Times, 8 March, 1959.
A Streetcar
Named Desire
Scenes 1-11
First presented in the
Schubert, New Haven, Conn., on 3 December 1947 by Irene Selznick:
[shortly afterwards moved to
the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, New
York]
Blanche DuBois - Jessica
Tandy
Stella Kowalski - Kim Hunter
Stanley Kowalski - Marlon
Brando
Harold Mitchell [Mitch] -
Karl Malden
Directed by Elia Kazan.
First London production in
the Aldwych Theatre on 12 October 1949:
Blanche DuBois - Vivien Leigh
Stella Kowalski - Renee
Asherson
Stanley Kowalski - Bonar
Colleano
Harold Mitchell [Mitch] -
Bernard Braden
Directed by Laurence Olivier.
The
Glass Menagerie
The Characters
Production Notes
Scenes 1-7
First presented on Broadway
at the Playhouse Theatre, March 31, 1945:
Amanda Wingfield – Laurette
Taylor
Laura, her daughter – Julie
Haydon
Tom, her son – Eddie Dowling
The Gentleman Caller [Jim
O’Connor] – Anthony Ross
Directed by Eddie Dowling and
Margo Jones.
First presented in London at
the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, on 28 July 1948:
Amanda Wingfield - Helen
Hayes
Laura - Frances Heflin
Tom - Phil Brown
The Gentleman Caller - Hugh
McDermott
Directed by John Gielgud.
===============================================================
He
was a born dramatist as few are ever born. Whatever he put on paper, superb or
superfluous, glorious or gaudy, could not fail to be electrifyingly actable. He
could not write a dull scene… Tennessee Williams will live as long as drama
itself.
If these words came from a
critic, I would not pay any special attention to them. But they did come from
no other but Peter Shaffer himself, the author of Equus (1973) and Amadeus
(1979), the closest British approximation to Tennessee – at least in terms of
popularity. Only after finishing the three plays in this volume did I realise
the hidden wisdom in Mr Shaffer's words.
There is something especially
compelling about the plays of Tennessee Williams. They are hot and cool at the
same time, hot because they invariably deal with sex in one way or another, and
cool because they never degenerate into cheap pornography. They often contain a
great deal of (usually mental but sometimes physical) violence, but they always
remain stylishly written mixtures of fiercely dramatic dialogue and evocative
stage directions, both regularly adorned by marvellous poetic flights. They are
dark, brooding, disturbing and superbly crafted pieces of drama. They deal with
human nature in a profound and uncompromising manner.
The three plays in this
Penguin Classics edition may be seen as a very abridged version of Tennessee's
most successful years. In March 1945 The
Glass Menagerie was the first massive success on Broadway for the dramatist
who had just turned 34. It ran for the impressive 563 performances. When A Streetcar Named Desire took Broadway
by storm in December 1947 and lasted for 855 performances in the course of two
years, everyone knew that this fellow was here to stay.
During the 1950s Tennessee
had a string of successes, though none of them was measured by such an amazing
run as Streetcar. Still, Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof (1955) and Sweet Bird of Youth
(1959), with 694 and 375 performances respectively, at least came close. But
then Tennessee's constant anxiety about the transitory nature of his success
started becoming reality. He continued to write plays until the end of his life
more than twenty years later. But during the 1960s and 1970s – The Night of the Iguana (1961) was his
last Broadway hit – he had to put up with lots of negative criticism,
lacklustre first nights and embarrassingly short runs.
Enough preliminary rambling.
Let us have a look at the plays.
Spoilers
ahead!
There is one question about A Streetcar Named Desire that must be
answered in the beginning. Does it make any sense reading this play if you
already know intimately the 1951 movie version directed by Elia Kazan? Well,
not much. Unless you have a special predilection for reading plays on paper, as
opposed to seeing them on the stage or the screen – as you might guess, I have
this defect of character – you don't really need to read Tennessee's original
if you have seen this particular screen adaptation. It is as close to
definitive version as possible. And there are formidable reasons why this
should be so.
First of all, it was
Tennessee Williams himself who adapted his own play for the screen. It shows.
The screenplay contains virtually the complete play. There are very few cuts,
most probably made to satisfy the prudish requirements of Hollywood at the
time. Reportedly, the movie was once badly cut by the censors – even such innocent
lines like Stanley's
''You know, if I didn't know that you was my wife's sister, I would get ideas
about you'' were cut – but in modern DVD editions all omissions are restored.
Even in the boldest version of the movie some passages of the original had to
be toned down, but none of them is of critical importance. For example, in the
play Blanche had many ''meetings'' with strangers, while in the play these are
''intimacies''. You do get the point either way, don't you?
Also, of course, there is nothing
mentioned on the screen about her husband being homosexual (under the code name
''degenerate'' as well as Blanche's direct evidence as given in Scene 6). But
this is not crucial either. Much too much has been made of it. Probably it was
a shock for Blanche to discover her husband in the bed with another man, but
surely the greater problem was that Allen proceeded to drive to the Moon Lake
casino and blow his brains out. Another essential part of that tragedy is the fact that Blanche not only worshipped him, but
it was she, unable to restrain herself, who precipitated the suicide by
revealing that she knew the truth.
The only other notable moment
that's missing even in the fully restored version of the movie is the rape in
Scene 10. Of course there is nothing explicit in the play, but Stanley does
take Blanche to the bed – and you can figure out the rest, can you? The
alternative in the movie is more elusive but wonderfully shot: after a short
struggle we have the reflection of the unconscious Blanche in the broken
mirror.
There are several small
additional scenes in the movie – the arrival of Blanche, her meeting with
Stella at the bowling arena, the quarrel between Stanley and Mitch at work –
but none of these is of any great importance. More importantly, the first scene
between Blanche and Mitch is transferred from the Kowalski's flat to the
romantically lit waterfront. The setting is more evocative and thus the
advantages of cinema over stage are explored to the full.
But on the whole the
screenplay is very close to the original play. The dialogue is nearly word for
word the same in both mediums, including many unforgettable lines:
Stanley [bottle in hand]: Have a shot?
Blanche: No, I – I
rarely touch it.
Stanley: Some
people rarely touch it, but it touches them often.
Stanley: I never
met a woman that didn't know if she was good-looking or not without being told,
and some of them that give themselves credit for more than they've got.
Blanche: Whoever
you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Blanche:
Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the only unforgivable thing in my
opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty.
Blanche: They told
me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries
and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields!
Blanche: No, I
have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instil a bunch
of bobby-soxers and drug-store Romeos with reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman
and Poe!
I don't know why but I think
there is something really sweet about the word ''bobby-soxer''.
The rumour has it that
Tennessee was unhappy with the alternative ending in the movie, apparently
having supplied it under external pressure. I don't see why this should be.
It's an improvement. In the play Stanley tries to console the crying Stella
after Blanche is taken away. But in the movie Stella takes their child, mutters
resolutely that she's never going back and runs the stairs to the neighbours
above; the movie ends with an offstage version of Stanley's trademark shout:
''STELA-A-A-A''. Now this is a most tantalising ending. You know that Stella,
despite her words, will come back to Stanley. But you somehow feel that their
marriage will never be the same again. The ''Blanche episode'' has marked it
for good.
Then there is the visual side
of the movie, perfectly conveying the sweaty and oppressive atmosphere of the
play. One component of the latter largely missing in the former is the constant
musical accompaniment, meticulously described in the stage directions and every
bit as maddening as the heat, but there is an ample compensation on the screen.
The sets and the costumes are superb. They marvellously capture what Tennessee
calls the ''raffish charm'' of the poor quarter of New Orleans where the action
takes place.
Then there is the director
Elia Kazan. He not only had a priceless experience with the play on Broadway,
but he apparently had a special gift for the screen as well. Despite the
additional scenes, most of the action is concentrated in the small and squalid
apartment of the Kowalskis. Yet the movie never feels static. Kazan makes a
superb use of different visual angles, constant camera movement and, above all,
imaginative lightning; the last one is particularly important since Blanche, as
you know, is quite a bit preoccupied with light. Last but not least, the
numerous perfectly placed close-ups give you an ample opportunity to appreciate
some of the greatest acting ever captured on film.
 |
The perfect cast, from l. to r.:
Vivien, Marlon, Kim and Karl. |
The cast in the movie I at
least cannot imagine that it will ever be surpassed. Again, there are very good
reasons for that. The Penguin edition, for some obscure reason (British
arrogance perhaps?), prints only the cast from the first London production. This
is unforgivable. The original Broadway cast must be given as well. The reason
for this is that it was ripped off almost
complete for the movie. The only difference is Blanche. But Vivien Leigh
was not just a star and a beauty: she came from West End where she had played
the part quite a few times under the direction of her husband. That's why the
acting in the movie is superlative and will probably remain unsurpassed:
because all four principals came on the set with intimate knowledge of their parts
from the stage.
 |
| Vivien as Blanche. |
There are those – like Karl
Malden, for one – who rather object that Jessica Tandy was dumped on the way to
Hollywood; but even Mr Malden realises that had she remained, he and Kim Hunter
would probably have been discarded. Quite apart from the fact – for which I
don't really care anyway – that Vivien Leigh was necessary to pull off the star
status of the picture, I cannot possibly imagine a better interpretation of
Blanche DuBois. The ambiguous relationship with Stella, alternating between
affection and accusations, the coquettish flirtations with Mitch, the mighty
clash with Stanley; her incredible vanity, her
manner that ''suggests moth'' (as beautifully put by Tennessee), her intellectual superiority,
her emotional breakdown, her dreams, her delusions, her pathos: Vivien is
excellent on all fronts. This is a tour
de force for the ages.
 |
Blanche (Vivien) and
Stanley (Marlon). |
One of the chief glories of
the movie is that Blanche DuBois is fully matched by Stanley Kowalski. Today it
is difficult to imagine a time when Marlon Brando was all but completely unknown.
When he came to portray Stanley on the screen – after a great run on Broadway,
let us remember – he was but 27 years old, starring in just his second movie.
Small wonder that he was catapulted to fame by A Streetcar Named Desire. To the everlasting shame of the Academy
he didn't win an Oscar for his incandescent performance. But it must be
admitted that Humphrey Bogart in The
African Queen is a serious competition.
In his stage directions,
Tennessee has described Stanley in a most unforgettable way. Such stage
directions, superb character sketches really, are one of the major reasons why I
love reading plays:
Animal joy in his
being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood
the centre of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of
it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a
richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out from this complete and
satisfying centre are all auxiliary channels of his life, such as his
heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humour, his love of good drink
and food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his
emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual
classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he
smiles at them.
Can you imagine a more
perfect Stanley Kowalski than Marlon Brando? If you can, let me know about him.
I am almost tempted to believe that Tennessee wrote the part with Brando in
mind – but historical evidence refutes this tantalising speculation. However
that may be, Marlon brings to Stanley Kowalski an astonishing vitality and
intensity, an explosive, apocalyptic energy that fits the character perfectly
and makes for a mind-blowing screen experience. Just remember his throwing the
radio through the window or his fit of rage at supper – Blanche's birthday, no
less – with the two sisters sitting with their eyes glued to their plates.
Brando once said he detested the character; I wonder if this is why he was able
to infuse it with such elemental fury.
 |
Blanche (Vivien) and
Stanley (Marlon).
|
It is important to stress
that even Stanley is not entirely without redeeming qualities. I don't, of
course, mean his bogus morality, as when he refuses to kiss his wife in front
of her presumably promiscuous sister, nor his equally sham pretension of being
well-versed in legal matters: ''In the state of Louisiana we have the
Napoleonic code according to which what belongs to the wife belongs to the
husband and vice versa. […] It looks to me like you have been swindled, baby,
and when you're swindled under the Napoleonic code I'm swindled too. And I don't like to be swindled.'' All right, Stanley, we got
the point. However, he is not stupid, though he is shrewd rather than
intelligent, his sense of humour is very funny if not exactly subtle, and his
anger at Blanche's snobbishness, however unseemly its expression, is a
justified one. And he is certainly not indifferent to Stella, despite the
social gulf between them of which he is also aware:
When we first met,
me and you, you thought I was common. How right you was, baby. I was common as
dirt. You showed me snapshot of the place with the columns. I pulled you down
off them columns and how you loved it, having them coloured lights going! And
wasn't we happy together, wasn't it all okay till she showed here?
That said, it is devilishly
difficult to like Stanley Kowalski. Although the violent behaviour is the least
of his shortcomings, raping your sister-in-law is not quite the most wonderful
thing you can do while your wife is in hospital giving birth to your child.
What's worse about Stanley is that he is the ultimate incarnation of the
practical man; for him ''imagination'' is a dirty word. He has his feet firmly
on the ground and he is excessively proud of that. I think this total indifference to anything spiritual
is the primary reason for his callous attitude to Blanche, although it is
certainly aggravated by his temperament and her flirtations. But it's news to
me that only likeable characters make for great reading. Rather to the
contrary: bad guys are far more fascinating. Stanley Kowalski is definitely
among the most compelling ones ever created.
Coming back to Marlon
Brando's performance – ''you can't take your eyes off him'', as Karl Malden
accurately put it – there is, of course, his justly legendary sex appeal to
convey Tennessee's revolutionary message. Again, one needs a huge dose of
historical imagination to appreciate the shock at the time. Gore Vidal has described
it beautifully:
Finally, when
Tennessee wrote A Streetcar Named Desire,
he inadvertently smashed one of our society's most powerful taboos. He showed
the male not only as sexually attractive in the flesh but as an object for
something never before entirely acknowledged, the lust of women. In the age of
Calvin Klein's steaming hunks, it must be hard for those under forty to realise
that there was ever a time when a man was nothing but a suit of clothes, a
shirt and tie, shined leather shoes and a gray felt hat. If thought attractive,
it was because he had a nice smile and a twinkle in his eye. Marlon Brando's
appearance of stage, as Stanley, in a torn sweaty T-shirt, was an earthquake;
and the male as sex object is still at our culture's center stage and will so
remain until the likes of Boy George redress, as it were, the balance. Yet,
ironically, Tennessee's auctorial sympathies were not with Stanley but with his
''victim'' Blanche.[1]
The last sentence is telling, and I am not sure the quotation marks are really
necessary. It is certainly true, however, that Blanche's mental degradation is
sensitively and compassionately depicted. One of the many pivotal questions of
the play, as I see it, is whether Blanche would have ended in the same way if
she had met with more understanding from Stanley and less prudishness by Mitch.
Perhaps yes; she is already on her way down when the play begins. But it is
just conceivable, if not very likely, that she might have recovered her wits
had she been treated otherwise. That's what makes her a real tragic character.
As Stella, in response to Stanley's doubtless ironic ''Delicate piece she is'',
memorably puts it:
She is. She was.
You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as
she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.
Yet this may be too
idealistic a treatment. The clash of cultures is far too harsh for a happy end.
It is amazing that Blanche and Stella are supposed to have more or less the
same background: they have drifted apart through the years until they have come
to occupy the opposite sides of the same equation. Perhaps the chief reason for
this is that desire, purely sexual desire, is enough for Stella to bear
Stanley's boorish stunts without any ill feeling. Blanche is by no means a
saint; her vast store of knowledge does include the carnal one. But her make-up
is altogether different and she would never be able to reconcile herself to
such things like ''apes'' playing a noisy game of poker or physical violence
that easily lends itself to animate objects. There is something noble and
moving in Blanche's attempts, however unsuccessful, to supplement physical
desire with spiritual richness.
 |
| Marlon and Vivien on the set of Streetcar (1951). |
If you can combine the best
features of Blanche and Stanley in one human being, you will get more or the
less the best combination that so imperfect a material as human nature allows.
The only drawback of
characters like Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski – especially when played so
magnificently by Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando – is that they tend to obscure
supporting roles like those of Stella and Mitch (both wonderfully acted in the
movie by Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, respectively). The neglect is unjust. Both
Stella and Mitch are essential for the play. Indeed, the whole thing makes
sense only with the complete quartet. It is significant that both Stella and
Mitch have their share in Blanche's destruction, yet both retain some affection
for her until the end: Stella is inconsolable; Mitch even challenges Stanley to
a fight. Of course it is too late. Stella's inability to oppose Stanley and
Mitch's moral horror at Blanche's past had already taken their toll.
Before leaving this endlessly
fascinating play, two further notes about two misconceptions that often find
their way in reviews.
One is the preposterous
notion about Mitch and Oedipal complex. This is simply nonsense. Karl Malden
was right on target when he remarked that his character hates his mother. Isaac
Asimov's words about Hamlet may well be applied, in a less intense way, to
Mitch as well: it is "not unconscious love that explains his actions, but
a very conscious and reasonable hate." It may be argued that Mitch's hate
is not conscious, but nor is there any indication on his part about love or
sexual desire for his mother. He makes few comments about her and they never
suggest anything but the attitude of a man who is submissive son and not an
insensitive human being. Also, it should not be forgotten, as demonstrated by
his cigarette case and the story connected with it that he tells Blanche (Scene
3), that Mitch has already escaped once from the tyranny of his mother, or at
least he would have if the girl in question hadn't died.
The second misconception is
to disparage the character of Stella because she endures Stanley's brutishness
without any complain, let alone resistance. Leaving aside her lack of physical
strength to resist and the uselessness of verbal arguments with somebody as
cocksure as Stanley, Stella has her own, if purely sexual, justification: ''But
there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark – that sort
of make everything else seem – unimportant.'' If this too is offensive to the
more fastidious readers, who are well advised to skip reading the works of this
particular playwright, it is worth mentioning that what Stella has to cope with
is by no means a rarity. This is clearly demonstrated by the scene between
Eunice and Steve Hubbel. It's a very minor incident between very minor
characters, but a consummate dramatist like Tennessee Williams would never have
introduced it unless he wanted to show that domestic violence in New Orleans
from the late 1940s is common. Whether this really was the case is of course
absolutely irrelevant.
The cliché goes that nobody
lives on an island. I believe this to be an illusion. The truth, it seems to
me, is exactly the opposite: nearly everybody lives on an island. Most people
just manage to build bridges. Some of these are rickety rope affairs, others
are as mighty as the Golden Gate, so the
quality of communication varies greatly. Very few are fortunate enough to build
whole isthmuses between the islands, thus enjoying the most perfect merging of
personalities (or souls, if you like) in so imperfect and appallingly material
a world. But there are also those who never manage to build even the most
miserable bridge. They have to be satisfied with glimpses of other lands;
distant or not, blurred by clouds and mists or not, but inaccessible all the
same.
So, in the end, don't we all,
in one degree or another, depend on the kindness of strangers?
Never mind all the above.
It's a great play and a great movie. Somehow I can't quite separate them; even
Blanche's confused way of talking is uncannily well-matched by Tennessee's
masterful use of the art of punctuation, dashes and commas especially. Despite
quite a few topical references that have become dated, the major themes of Streetcar are every bit as relevant
today as they were when the play opened on Broadway nearly 55 years ago. This
will remain so as long as people want to be together and maintain meaningful
relationships on a long-term basis.
So much for Streetcar. The other two plays could
hardly have been more different. It has been claimed – by Gore Vidal, no less –
that Tennessee
always worked with the same stock characters. I don't see it that way. If you
are so inclined, you may find a number of superficial similarities between
Amanda and Blanche, Boss Finley and Big Daddy, even Brick Pollitt and Chance
Wayne if you like. But that's just scratching the surface. Immediately beneath
that surface all those characters have marked individuality. And so do the
plays.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sweet
Bird of Youth is set in St Cloud, a mythical town along the Gulf Coast (perhaps in Florida?), and the whole
action takes place within less than 24 hours. It's a very seedy story of drugs,
blackmail, lechery, frustration, violence and venereal disease, regularly
spiced up with family conflicts, transitory glory, political propaganda and,
above all, passed youth. In lesser hands such material would have turned as a
cheap shocker, at best giving a few hours light entertainment. But under
Tennessee's hands an absorbing, poignant and disturbing study of human weakness
emerged. It extends way beyond its limited time span and it delves far deeper
than the unpleasant surface may lead you believe.
Chance Wayne has the same
problem as the Count of Monte Cristo: he can't defeat time. He has passed his
youth – at 29! – and there is nothing left for him. He comes to realise, finally,
that it was only the seemingly imperishable glory of youth that made him endure
his miserable life so far. The discovery is fatal. Do you think his first name is
accidental? Not at all. The man has no chance.
At first glance it's easy to
be impatient with Chance. How on earth could he ever think that this crazy plan
of his may succeed? Kidnapping this fading movie star and blackmailing her with
drugs like that. And why should he suppose that ''his girl'', Heavenly, whom he
hasn't seen in years, would be interested in his dreamy fairy-tale about
Hollywood career? Especially considering that the last time they saw each other
she came only so far as to shout ''Chance, I'm sick of your lies.'' Several
times does he come back to St Cloud
to be with her – only to leave her again, ostensibly to make
money/name/whatever for their happiness together. Meanwhile he was in the army
for a while, when ''that thing in Korea came along'', but made a living mostly
as a gigolo. And now he is going to become a Hollywood star!
In short, Chance is a weak
and spineless creature, utterly incapable of facing the hard reality of life. His vain posturing
as a would-be success on the West Coast is outrageous. His tremendously
condescending attitude to his old acquaintances, even more so. Throughout much
of the play he is indeed obnoxious. Yes, it is very easy to be enraged by Chance Wayne.
But if you really are, you’re only scratching the surface.
At second glance, Chance is a
good deal more than an ordinary misfit. He is a humanist and an idealist; in
short, he is a dreamer. He dreams of the same thing that all human beings want,
consciously or not, but seldom achieve: freedom to fulfill themselves. Unlike
the vast majority, however, he is not willing to sacrifice it for security. Though
capable of cruelty when his impulses are thwarted, he is entirely devoid of
envy and malice, his ironic, but good-natured, comments on his former friends
notwithstanding. This is quite an achievement considering the life he had so
far led. In the end, he even reveals himself capable of rare magnanimity: he goes down,
but he refuses to take others with him. As for his philosophical speculations,
you may be tempted to regard them as ridiculously simplistic, but I think you’d
do better to consider them seriously:
Princess, the
great difference between people in this world is not between the rich and the
poor or the good and the evil, the biggest of all differences in this world is
between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't
any pleasure in love, but just watched it with envy, sick envy. The spectators
and the performers. I don't mean just ordinary pleasure or the kind you can
buy, I mean great pleasure, and nothing that’s happened to me or to Heavenly
since can cancel out the many long nights without sleep when we gave each other
such pleasure in love as very few people can look back on in their lives…
Of course he is wrong. The
events of the play, largely but not entirely due to his incapacity and
irresolution, did “cancel out” whatever there was, however beautiful, between
him and Heavenly. In some parallel universe, where free will is a little more
than illusion and people care a little more of each other, Chance Wayne would
have made something decent of his life. Not in this universe, not in this
society, not in this play. “Society often forgives the criminal; it never
forgives the dreamer.” These words of Oscar Wilde, written well over half a
century before Sweet Bird of Youth,
summarise the tragedy of Chance Wayne better than anything.
For Chance, as far as I’m
concerned, is a genuine tragic character. Like all tragic characters, he
precariously balances on the thin rope between bliss and despair. The fatal
flaw in his nature, if you can pinpoint but one reason for his downfall, is not
vanity or vacillation; these are secondary side effects. It is his goodness;
the inclination to cause no harm, the desire to give more than he has taken. Ironically
enough, this is expressed most eloquently by his work as a gigolo which did
more good than many a preacher and missionary:
Princess: What did
they pay you?
Chance:
I
gave people more than I took. Middle-aged people I gave back a feeling of
youth. Lonely girls? Understanding, appreciation! An absolutely convincing show
of affection. Sad people, lost people? Something light and uplifting!
Eccentrics? Tolerance, even odd things they long for…
Hypocritical, you say? Just
make-believe? Yes, certainly, but so what? All those people Chance brought
happiness to never knew it was make-believe. For them it had all the appearance
of reality.
The curious
relationship between Chance and the Princess forms the core of the play. It
starts as mutual exploitation but ends on a much warmer note, meanwhile passing
through some pretty tempestuous stages. It is a shattering experience for both
of them. She comes to realise, not without surprise, that she is still capable
of tenderness towards other people. She still cares. The callous world of show
business hasn’t destroyed everything. He comes to realise that the sweet bird
of youth has flown. It is not coming back and he has nothing to fall back to.
The Princess is a
bafflingly fascinating character herself; together with Karen Stone, she is
among Tennessee’s
finest creations in the “depressed aging actress” category. Like Chance, she is
a combination of misleading surface and surprising depth. Unlike Chance,
however, she has a greater capacity for both internal analysis and external
action. The difference between them is one of degree rather than of kind. And as so
often happened, the female psyche brought out the best in Tennessee. It is left
to the Princess to make the most perceptive portrait of Chance and herself. She
sees clearly what is quite beyond his meagre powers of observation:
Princess: We are two monsters, but with this
difference between us. Out of the passion and torment of my existence I have
created a thing that I can unveil, a sculpture, almost heroic, that I can
unveil, which is true.
This is precisely
the point. Chance’s life is one of profound emptiness. The only thing he ever had
that gave it some semblance of meaning was Heavenly. And now he’s lost her
forever, not least because he was responsible, though he didn’t know it at the
time, for infecting her with a hideous, disfiguring venereal disease. It’s a
fine stroke of dramatic irony on Tennessee’s
part to make Chance’s work as a gigolo source of both some of his best and some
of his worst deeds.
One of the
hallmarks of the truly great play, and something Tennessee confessed to aim self-consciously
at[2],
is the essential uncertainty about the characters that gives you ample room for
speculation
after the final curtain. What chance would they have had, Chance and the Princess,
if they
had left the stage together? Would she really help him to find himself? Or would he
turn into a kept man on a leash? I’d say the chances are fifty-fifty. The Princess herself
has the Hand of Doom hanging over her. Does she realise it? In the stage
directions, Tennessee
has given us priceless clues under the form of a “note”. Just like Chance’s
“attitude should be self-recognition but not self-pity”, so the Princess is
“really equally doomed”. He is emphatic that “to indicate she is going on to
further triumph would be to falsify her future.” Deep down inside, she knows
that comeback she has achieved with her last movie, no matter how promising it
may seem at the moment, would be short-lived. “Both are faced with castration”, Tennessee brutally
finishes this note, Chance literally, the Princess figuratively. Perhaps the
author in this case was a trifle overzealous to explain himself; quite the same
conclusion may be drawn from these poignant words:
Princess: Chance,
we’ve got to go on.
Chance: Go on to
where? I couldn’t go past my youth, but I’ve gone past it.
[…]
Princess: You’re
still young, Chance.
Chance: Princess, the age of some people can only be
calculated by the level of – the level of – rot in them. And by that measure
I’m ancient.
Princess: What am I? – I know, I’m dead, as old Egypt… Isn’t it
funny? We’re still sitting here together, side by side in this room, like we
were occupying the same bench on a train – …
This is how that odd
romance ends. Well, almost. In the very last lines, the Princess, then in the
presence of Tom Junior and his gang of butchers who apparently don’t object,
offers to take Chance with her. This is the moment when we realise that she
has, not just a real empathy with Chance’s predicament, but more than
negligible amount of goodness in her. Many others would have given up Chance as
a lost cause – and with good reason. Even more would have refused to have anything
to do with him if they had been treated as the Princess was in Act II, Scene 2.
“Get the lady a wheelchair”, said Chance in the middle of the crowded bar.
But she understood it was the frustrating circumstances, not his real self,
that was speaking.
You have to love a girl named
Heavenly, but she is the least developed of the main characters. Like her
brother, Tom Junior, she seldom escapes the menacing shadow of her father. Boss
Finley may well be the most detestable character Tennessee ever created. Nasty
father, corrupt politician, vile racist, pseudo-religious power-obsessed
megalomaniac, there is not a single even faintly redeeming quality in his make-up. Yes, he condemns
“a certain operation on a young black gentleman” (castration by the white mob,
in other words), he thinks it is “deplorable”, yet he understands “the emotions
the lay behind it”. To his credit, it’s never made clear whether he shares such
notions personally or is only using them in his speeches to manipulate the
crowd (though that’s quite bad enough). Consciously or not, this man is using
everything and everybody for his own self-aggrandizement. This certainly
includes his children whom he treats with a combination of faint contempt (Tom
Junior) and phony affection (Heavenly).
Even Boss Finley, for all his
power, cannot altogether escape the ravages of Time. He finds it harder and
harder to play God in St Cloud.
The skeletons in his cupboard (Heavenly’s venereal disease and subsequent
hysterectomy) creep out; more and more often hecklers interrupt his ridiculous
speeches in order to ask embarrassing questions. Tennessee
being Tennessee,
he does not neglect the carnal aspect, either. Boss Finley can no longer “cut
the mustard”, as his mistress Miss Lucy, a small character with big charm, has
been careful to inform everybody by writing this message on the mirror in the
ladies’ room with her lipstick. And yet, Boss Finley more or less avoids the
tragedy in the end. There are indications that his glory is coming to an end,
but it may still endure for quite some time. He is much less doomed than either
Chance or the Princess. This is one of the things that make this play a
tragedy.
The only fault with the whole
work I can find is the melodramatic finale, the very last words of Chance which
close the curtain. It seems to me unduly sentimental that he should address his
cold-hearted
butchers thus:
I don’t ask for
your pity, but just for your understanding – not even that – no. Just for your
recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all.
This would be a terrific
conclusion if it were addressed to the audience as a soliloquy. Then again,
maybe it was. I know in twentieth-century prose drama the practice was long
considered outdated. But in many of his later plays – for example Small Craft Warnings (1973) and Vieux Carré (1977) – Tennessee did use
monologues that were addressed, if not directly to the audience, certainly not
to any of the characters either; they seemed to happen outside of such mundane
conventions like time and space. Perhaps he started as early as 1959. Perhaps
Chance’s last words were the closest to genuine soliloquy he ever came to
(though his life story in Act II, Scene 2, comes pretty close, too); the stage
direction before them reads simply “rising and advancing to the forestage”. For
my part, this admittedly a little speculative addressing of the audience makes
the conclusion much more affecting. If I were a director, I would certainly
suggest it to the actor playing Chance Wayne.
Sweet
Bird of Youth is one of Tennessee’s masterpieces, possibly his greatest dramatic
study of his lifelong obsession: Time. Improbable as the plot may be, the
people ring true. Like the two other plays in this volume, there are four main characters
here, two major ones (Chance and the Princess) and two relatively minor ones (Boss Finley and Heavenly), and none two of
them could have been more different. Thus the play has the emotive power of a
great operatic quartet, for example “Bella figlia dell’amore” from Verdi’s Rigoletto. What a masterful feat of
characterization! And what a devastating tragedy! Only the disagreeable
characters (Boss Finley and the watered-done copy of himself), as it often happens in
this world, survive the apocalypse. All of the rest are either ruined (Chance,
Heavenly) or well on their way to be ruined (the Princess). The reasons are
extremely complex of course, but the common denominator is clear enough. Time
is an enemy to us all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The
Glass Menagerie is an intimate, lyrical, wistful and poignant play. It’s a memory play
in which everything happens in a kind of surreal atmosphere. There is no need
for me to try to give any idea of it. I can merely quote the dramatist’s
beautifully written and highly revealing essays “The Characters” and “Production
Notes” (a very good reminder that such pieces are well worth reading) as well
as the opening speech of the central character, Tom, a poet working in the
warehouse of a large shoe company, obviously based (please note: based) on Tennessee himself.
„The Characters” should be quoted complete. It
supplies concise insight into all four characters that no actor or actress can
afford to miss:
AMANDA WINGFIELD [the mother]: A little woman of great but
confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place. Her characterization
must be carefully created, not copied from type. She is not paranoiac, but her
life is paranoia. There is much to admire in Amanda, and as much to love and
pity as there is to laugh at. Certainly she has endurance and a kind of
heroism, and though her foolishness makes her unwittingly cruel at times, there
is tenderness in her slight person.
LAURA WINGFIELD [her daughter]: Amanda, having failed to
establish contact with reality, continues to live in vitally in her illusions,
but Laura’s situation is even graver. A childhood illness has left her
crippled, one leg slightly shorter than the other, and held in a brace. This
defect need not be more than suggested on the stage. Stemming from this,
Laura’s separation increases till she is like a piece of her own glass
collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf.
TOM WINGFIELD [her son, and the narrator of the play]:
A poet with a job in a warehouse. His nature is not remorseless, but to escape
from a trap he has to act without pity.
JIM O’CONNOR [the gentleman caller]: A nice, ordinary,
young man.
The “Production Notes”
contain one of Tennessee’s most brutal attacks on realism. I can’t say that I
share his near-contempt for photography as an art, but I do see his point. It
is striking to observe how many writers, profoundly different in each and every
aspect, have steered clear of realism: as far as playwrights are concerned, we
may start with Shakespeare, include Wilde and Shaw in between, and finish with
Tennessee himself; as far as writers of narrative fiction are concerned,
Maugham and Maupassant, or Balzac and Dickens, are but a few examples. For what
is realism? An imitation of reality! This may be a convenient way to hide one’s
mediocrity, but it’s definitely no art at all. Is it strange that it appears to
be largely a twentieth-century phenomenon? Tennessee was an exception, though.
He never was a realist. He was a writer who aimed at realistic presentation of
truth – a very different matter. Be that as it may, Tennessee’s reflections are
very much worthy of reflection:
When a play
employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying
to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting
experience, but is actually or should be attempting to find a closer approach,
a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are. The straight
realistic play with its genuine frigidaire and authentic ice-cubes, its
characters that speak exactly as its audience speaks, corresponds to the academic
landscape and has the same virtue of photographic likeness. Everyone should
know nowadays the unimportance of photographic in art: the truth, life, or
reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or
suggest, in essence, only transformation, through changing into other forms
than those which were merely present in appearance.
Finally, Tom opens the play
in a most captivating way, immediately capturing the attention of the audience:
Yes, I have tricks
in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage
magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you
truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
[…]
The
play is memory.
Being
a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic.
In
memory everything happens to music. That explains the fiddle in the wings.
I am
the narrator in the play, but also a character in it. The other characters are
my mother Amanda, my sister Laura, and a gentleman caller who appears in the
final scenes.
He
is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of
reality that we were somehow set apart from.
But
since I have a poet’s weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a
symbol; he is the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.
There
is a fifth character in the play who doesn’t appear except in this
larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel.
This
is our father who left us a long time ago.
He
was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job
with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town…
The
last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast
of Mexico, containing a message of two words –
‘Hello
– Good-bye!’ and no address.
I
think the rest of the play will explain itself…
Isn’t this a tantalising
opening? And yes, the play does explain itself with rare lucidity. I will limit
myself to a few observations.
It is of utmost importance to
approach this play without any preconceived notions. This is true of every work
of art, of course, but it is especially pertinent to highly original works. The
first time I read Menagerie I was
rather disappointed. I had just finished Streetcar
which I thought (and still do) one of the finest tragedies ever to have reached
the theatre stage. After this shattering experience, I found Menagerie a lacklustre chamber piece of
no special merit. Human folly is truly endless! My initial reaction was very
unjust, not to use stronger words. Now I know that Menagerie is every bit as great a tragedy as Streetcar. It is just different, more subdued, more subtle, more
elusive. Both plays are built around quartets of main characters, both are set
in specific, charmingly romantic suburban surroundings (St Louis and New
Orleans), and both consist of separate scenes not noticeably organised into
acts. But that’s just about all they share.
(To be precise, it is not entirely
accurate to claim that Menagerie is
not separated into acts. The last two scenes are considerably longer than the
others and are usually considered as something like Act II. This makes perfect
dramatic sense as these are the only scenes in which the gentleman caller
appears and there is very little time (one dinner) that elapses between them.
Indeed, the author himself separates the play in his notes to “Part I.
Preparation for a Gentleman Caller.” and ”Part II. The Gentleman calls.”)
At first reading, or seeing,
the play may strike one as rambling without rhyme or reason. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Each scene is carefully crafted as to contribute to the
character and plot development. Only when the play is over does one realise how
inexorably it has worked towards the tragic denouement. And make no mistake:
this is tragedy. The gentleman caller
is the only one who escapes the devastation; then again, I wonder how often he
will look later at that broken glass unicorn and remember wistfully the strange
girl that gave it to him, uneasily wondering what happened with her. It’s
frightening to contemplate the future of Amanda and Laura. Without the only
breadwinner in the house, they will at best starve. Both are completely unfit –
though for very different reasons: old-fashioned refinement in Amanda’s case,
pathologically introvert personality in Laura’s – to earn their living in this
society. Tom’s bleak fate, of course, forms the chilling conclusion of the
play. He is doomed to be haunted by the demons of his past, no matter how far
away he runs. Each of these characters contributes to the family tragedy, yet
all of them are presented in a sympathetic light. Tennessee’s formidable powers
of characterisation have seldom been employed with greater success.
Biographical parallels should
not to be carried too far. Much as Amanda, Laura and Tom were based on Edwina,
Rose and Tennessee himself, respectively, they still are characters in a
fictional story. The very nature of the play as “memory”, and even more so the
author’s stressing the “poetic license” memories usually take with facts,
should warn amateur biographers about the dangers of their fiction-to-life
method. The real Tom, for example, never left his mother and sister for good.
On the contrary, he kept in touch and supported them until death intervened.
And that was a long time indeed; Edwina died in 1980, aged 95, less than three
years before her son; Rose outlived her younger brother by 13 years. As soon as
Menagerie started making pots of
money, Tennessee
assigned
half
of the royalties to his mother, thus allowing her, for the first time in her
life, to become independent of his dissolute father whom she couldn’t stand.
For all we know, Edwina did indeed disapprove of her son’s passion for “the
insane Mr. Lawrence”, and though she refused to recognise herself in Amanda she
probably was much the same incarnation of Southern vivacity and politeness, yet
she was also much more appreciative of Tennessee’s
vocation than Amanda’s “you selfish dreamer!” suggests. The same caveat must be
kept in mind when comparing the play to “Portrait of a Girl in Glass”, a short
story from the early 1940s that provided the basis – please note: the basis – for the play. Such parallels,
biographical or artistic, make for a nice diversion, but they seldom lead to
deeper understanding.
One of the things that strike
me most strongly in Menagerie is the astonishing
range of moods and styles for such a short play. It covers the whole gamut from
high-voltage drama (e.g. the quarrel between Tom and Amanda in Scene 3) to
meltingly beautiful romance (the last scene). All scenes are permeated with
Tennessee’s prodigious sense of humour, in itself a most diverse phenomenon
that spans the mini-universe between Amanda’s constant chattering about her glorious youth, not to mention her singing
the great Southern hit “Lemonade, lemonade / Made in the shade and stirred with
a spade – / Good enough for any old maid!”, and Tom’s subtle irony at the
expense of everybody else (save Laura), sometimes turning into harsh sarcasm
when he touches on social issues. All this is clothed in some of the most
perfect, most powerful and most deceptively simple prose ever put on
paper. Gorgeous turns of phrase abound in the stage directions, for instance
the fire-escape being “a touch of accidental poetic truth, for all of these
huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human
desperation.” As an example of superb characterization in the dialogue, succinct yet
penetrating, I give here the personal history of Jim O’Connor as presented by
Tom in the beginning of Scene 6:
In high school Jim
was a hero. He had tremendous Irish good nature and vitality with the scrubbed
and polished look of white chinaware. He seemed to move in a continual
spotlight. He was a star in basketball, captain of the debating club, president
of the senior class and the glee club and he sang the male lead in the annual
light operas. He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed
always at the point of defeating the law of gravity. He was shooting with such
velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him to arrive
at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty. But Jim
apparently ran into more interference after his graduation from Soldan. His
speed had definitely slowed. Six years after he left high school he was holding
a job that wasn’t much better than mine.
Though I’m convinced that
Tennessee was much less of a social reformer than some critics try to make him
out, the play does have its share of social critique. The Wingfields are
presented as members of the “largest and fundamentally enslaved section of
American society to avoid fluidity and differentiation and to exist and
function as one interfused mass of automatism”, their lives wasted in “vast
hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths
in overcrowded urban centers”. It’s all very Huxleyan; very dystopian, claustrophobic,
pessimistic and frightening. And it’s all, alas, still very relevant to our own times, often mistakenly
thought to be more advanced and more progressive. Tom describes all this to the
audience with complete simplicity; no high-flown obscurity or bombastic
phrases for him. Yet his monologue certainly has a peculiar kind of poetry:
Across
the alley from us was the Paradise Dance Hall. On evenings in spring the
windows and doors were open and the music came outdoors. Sometimes the lights
were turned out except for a large glass sphere that hung from the ceiling. It
would turn slowly about and filter the dusk with delicate rainbow colors. Then
the orchestra played a waltz or a tango, something that had a slow and sensuous
rhythm. Couples would come outside, to the relative privacy of the alley. You
could see them kissing behind ash-pits and telephone poles.
This
was the compensation for lives that passed like mine, without any change or
adventure.
Adventure
and change were imminent in this year. They were waiting around the corner for
all these kids.
Suspended
in the mist over Berchtesgaden,
caught in the folds of Chamberlain’s umbrella.
In
Spain there was Guernica!
But
here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, bars, and movies,
and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with
brief, deceptive rainbows….
All
the world was waiting for bombardments!
But my favourite what-a-sick-society
part is the blistering picture of Hollywood as a giant brainwashing machine
bend on producing mass delusions. This is hardly less relevant nowadays. Since
going to the movies, together with his writing poems on shoeboxes, is Tom’s
favourite form of escape from reality (as are the past for Amanda and the glass
menagerie for Laura), he is in excellent position to sum up the matter:
People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the
adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark
room and watches them have them! Yes, until there’s a war. That’s when
adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone’s
dish, not only Gable’s! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark
room to have some adventures themselves – Goody, goody! – It’s our turn now, to
go to the South Sea Island – to make a safari – to be exotic, far-off! – But
I’m not patient. I don’t want to wait till then. I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!
“People go to the movies instead of moving!” Change “movies” for any form of moronic mass
entertainment (e.g. reality TV, the most pernicious of all) and “moving” for
“living” and there you are.
Finally, the final scene
deserves a special mention. This is the perfect romance: beautiful and doomed. It
happens in real time, right before your eyes, yet it feels entirely convincing;
the fact that Jim and Laura had known each other in high-school (a moment
missing in the short story) is crucial for that. You know it would have worked
out flawlessly. You know it is the only thing that could have saved Laura. This
makes it all the more painful when it is shattered, completely and unexpectedly
– yet convincingly. This is Laura’s breaking point. The girl of glass has been
broken and she can’t be mended. You feel she would never resume contact with
reality. This is what makes this play a devastating tragedy as far as I am
concerned. After this extremely affecting scene, every other ending but a bleak
one would have been inappropriate. This is what Hollywood did in the 1950 movie version – and
it totally ruined the original. Tennessee knew better. He finished the play in
the only possible way – the saddest one:
I
left Saint Louis. I descended the steps of this fire-escape for a last time and
followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion
what was lost in space –
I
traveled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves,
leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have
stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares,
taking me altogether by surprise.
Perhaps
it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent
glass –
Perhaps
I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found
companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window
is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate
colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow.
Then
all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes
. . .
Oh,
Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I
intended to be!
I reach
for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a
drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles
out!
(Laura bends over the candles.)
– for nowadays the world is lit by lightning!
Blow out your candles, Laura – and so good-bye. . . .
(She blows the candles out.)
P.S. The cover is credited as ''The Poker Night, 1948, detail, by
Thomas Hart Benton'', but this is surely Scene 3 from Streetcar, probably inspired by the Broadway production at the
time. The standing man in the background bears more than a passing resemblance
to Marlon Brando, as does the blond woman to Jessica Tandy.
[1] Introduction to Collected Stories by Tennessee Williams, New Directions, 1985, pp.
xxiii-xxiv.
[2] See
the essay "Critic Says "Evasion," Writer Says
"Mystery", reprinted in Where I
Live, New Directions, 1978, ed. Christine R. Day.
The point is, of
course, arguable. You may prefer to be told precisely what to believe about
every character in a play; you may prefer to know precisely what will be the
future course of their lives, happy or disastrous or anywhere in between.
Then I am not your
playwright. My characters make my play. I always start with them, they take
spirit and body in my mind. Nothing that they say or do is arbitrary or
invented. They build the play about them like spiders weaving their webs, sea
creatures making their shells. I live with them for a year and a half or two
years and I know them far better than I know myself, since I created them and
not myself.
But still they
must have that quality of life which is shadowy.
[...]
Frankly, I don't
want people to leave the Morosco Theatre knowing everything about all the
characters they have witnessed that night in violent interplay, I don't want
them to be quite certain what will happen to these characters that night or in
the morning. Because they themselves, when they step out of the Morosco, cannot
be certain that a truck will not run them down while they are hailing a taxi. I
give them views, but not certainties.
Every moment of
human existence is alive with uncertainty. You may call it ambiguity, you may
even call it evasion. I want them to leave the Morosco as they do leave it each
night, feeling that they have met with a vividly allusive, as well as
disturbingly elusive, fragment of human experience, one that not only points at
truth but at the mysteries of it, much as they will leave this world when they
leave it, still wondering somewhat about what happened to them, and for what
reason or purpose.
