Lovely and Misfit

Synopsis

Three 'undiscovered' short plays by Tennessee Williams. And Tell Sad Stories Of The Death Of Queens: The central character, Candy Delaney, is a gay transvestite who lives in New Orleans’ French Quarter. His long time partner has recently abandoned him in favour of a younger lover. Lonely and determined to find a new mate, Candy brings home Karl, a young sailor who proves to be a volatile and dangerous choice. Mister Paradise: A young woman home on holiday from an elite women’s college enters a squalid French Quarter residence. She is seeking Mr Paradise, the author of a book of poetry that she discovered propping up a three-legged table in an antique store. Summer At The Lake: A sensitive youth desperately seeks a place of refuge from his mother who denounces him as a dreamer and ' different ­ or Queer or something'. Swimming in the lake becomes his pleasure and place of refuge.

Our Review:

12 March 2007

With The Glass Menagerie continuing in the West End and The Rose Tattoo about to open at the National, London’s informal Tennessee Williams festival takes an intriguing diversion into unknown territory with this short trilogy of “lost” playlets in the smaller of the Trafalgar Studios.

The Williams canon of great work is by no means decided – how surprising a discovery was Summer and Smoke last year? – and the most substantial item on this bill – And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens, despite its arch reference to Shakespeare’s Richard II - is an extraordinary sketch, dating from the late 1950s. Suppressed in his lifetime by the playwright himself, it is about a transvestite in the French Quarter of New Orleans trying to seduce a “straight” pick-up by getting him drunk.

The transvestite, Candy, hires herself out as Karl’s prostitute for the night having mixed him the lethal “violet” (about a ...

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Latest User Review

Michael - 16 March 2007:

A joy to see such well written, performed and directed plays in an intimate studio. Well done!...

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