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Stage

A spring fling with Tennessee Williams

By JOHN FLEMING
Published March 15, 2007

American Stage could do a Tennessee Williams cycle. This week, the company opens Suddenly Last Summer. Next season's schedule includes A Streetcar Named Desire.

As critic Kenneth Tynan once wrote, Williams' speciality was "hysteria precariously held in check by formal habits of speech." Suddenly Last Summer, premiered in 1958, has his trademark character types: a monstrous Southern matriarch, a truth-telling spinster and a sensitive doctor, all fixated on the death of a gay poet. "There are passages in Suddenly Last Summer which are perhaps as well written as anything I've done," Williams wrote in Memoirs.

Williams' play was adapted (by Gore Vidal) for a 1959 movie with Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift. In his book, the playwright recounted making the movie deal in which he received $50,000 and 20 percent of the profits. "The profits were as good as the movie was bad," he wrote.

The American Stage cast includes Chris Friday as Dr. Cucrowitz and Katherine Michelle Tanner as Catherine Holly, shown here. The production is directed by Todd Olson.

Suddenly Last Summer opens at 8 p.m. Friday and runs through April 15. $22-$35. There is a preview at 7:30 tonight. Pay-what-you-can nights are March 27 and April 3. (727) 823-7259; www.americanstage.org.

[Last modified March 14, 2007, 09:28:28]