Scan barcode
A review by duffypratt
27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams
2.0
Think of all the oddly placed Shakespeare adaptations -- Richard III in a 1930s Fascist state: Romeo and Juliet in a modern day South Beach, or on NY's upper west side; The Tempest in space (Forbidden Planet); Macbeth in feudal Japan (Throne of Blood). And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of odd off-Broadway productions where the director had an "idea." Many of these are truly awful, but for some reason it's tremendously easy to imagine Shakespeare in other places and at other times.
Which gets me to Tennessee Williams. I tend to like him. But reading these one act plays, for some reason it struck me how bound they seem to be to the American South in the blues/jazz era. That's how particular his work seems to me. When I think of his plays, I feel sweat. I see beads of water rolling down the outside of a glass with some sickly sweet liquor in it. Everything is both languid and intense. His characters tend to cry out for more shade.
The plays here are one acts. They came across to me as sketches, usually character sketches. And there's nothing wrong with that. There were at least three, and maybe more, takes on Blanche Dubois, refracted in different ways. For the most part, these plays seemed more like character reveals than truly dramatic. I may have been missing something, and might think differently about them if I saw them performed. But I didn't see all that much in the way of motion or momentum in the majority of them. And the characters, for the most part, seemed to me like revamps of characters I had already seen in his other plays. Thus, reading them didn't do all that much for me. But then again, reading really is a bad way to get introduced to plays. The sad thing is that there is basically little, or no, opportunity to see any of these things performed. That I would probably like.
Which gets me to Tennessee Williams. I tend to like him. But reading these one act plays, for some reason it struck me how bound they seem to be to the American South in the blues/jazz era. That's how particular his work seems to me. When I think of his plays, I feel sweat. I see beads of water rolling down the outside of a glass with some sickly sweet liquor in it. Everything is both languid and intense. His characters tend to cry out for more shade.
The plays here are one acts. They came across to me as sketches, usually character sketches. And there's nothing wrong with that. There were at least three, and maybe more, takes on Blanche Dubois, refracted in different ways. For the most part, these plays seemed more like character reveals than truly dramatic. I may have been missing something, and might think differently about them if I saw them performed. But I didn't see all that much in the way of motion or momentum in the majority of them. And the characters, for the most part, seemed to me like revamps of characters I had already seen in his other plays. Thus, reading them didn't do all that much for me. But then again, reading really is a bad way to get introduced to plays. The sad thing is that there is basically little, or no, opportunity to see any of these things performed. That I would probably like.