Overloaded | Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980 (Library of America)

The Lyrical Voice of Tennessee Williams | Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980 (Library of America) | Tennessee Williams

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	• Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980 (Library of America) Tennessee Williams Library of America, 2000 - 975 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the greatest

Tennessee Williams is in the top ranks of American playwrights. His works are a MUST for serious students of the American theatre. Moreover, they are wonderful works for actors to read and learn from -- some of the finest characters, most poignant scenes, and brilliant insights on human nature AND theatrical staging that you can find anywhere. Cheerful? No. Uplifting? Usually not. Brilliant, stageworthy and gripping? Always. This collection, both volumes, gives you all the plays, plus some very worthwhile notes and prefaces from Williams himself.

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My review refers to the two Ten Williams volumes of the LoA.
I love the LoA. The books give me the supreme pleasure in reading. They are so beautifully printed on optimal paper in an optimal size, that I sometimes read stuff that is not worth reading.
I have read '10' for two reasons: 1. because I had bought the LoA, and 2. because I had read a lot about the 'glorious bird' in Gore Vidal's 2 volume memoirs. And then, of course, I had seen the Glass Menagerie on Stage and the Cat on the Hot Tin Roof in the movies. Can't remember what else I might have seen before I read this. I saw Suddenly Last Summer only after I read it. I never saw A Streetcar or the Iguana. Pity.
Let me say straightforward, that I love half a dozen to maximum 10 of TW's plays. They are pulp material, they are trash, they are melodrama, and they are true, and gripping, and honest, and vulgar...
And they are great.
But the early plays are plain nothing, while the last few ones are abominable.
It is impossible to draw a strict line when he started to write readable stuff and when he declined so badly that he stopped doing that. But for me it is clear: his early attempts are trash, and so are his last.
My conclusion: the LoA would have done better to restrict themselves to one volume and then focus on the main phase.
If they want to re-issue, I can offer advice as to which plays to include and which ones not.

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The Lyrical Voice of Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams represented a major advance in American drama as he introduced a lyricism that had previously been missing. Eugene O'Neill helped the American theatre grow up, but Williams was the one who made it sing.

Williams was able to create complex, vibrant plays which gave intense life to all of the contradictions, nastiness, dysfunction and beauty of American life and families. America has never produced a more honest or sincere playwright. His characters are always searching for ways to hang on to their humanity as the forces of repression and authoritarianism threaten to swallow them up or destroy them.

But above all else, Williams' dialogue is superbly, sublimely poetic. For Williams, the drama is in language itself, and no one has ever used words to greater effect than Tennessee Williams. Both Library of America volumes of Williams' plays are essential reading for people interested in theatre, America, and/or the possibilities of hope and grace in turbulent times.

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Am I allowed to review a review?

I, for one, worship the pulp Tennesse Williams typed upon, but I think Mark E. Baxter's review below might just give Tenn himself a run for his money when it comes to audaciously witty, ironic, shocking, and ultimately moving writing. At the very least, Williams (a man who was once seen at a production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" cackling "Haha, she's off to the nuthouse now!" as the curtain fell) would have enjoyed this hilariously, astonishingly off-kilter review. Brava, Mark E. Baxter! Well done!

reviews: page 1, 2

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