Tag Archives: Tennessee Williams

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AT THE MORGAN

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Bringing together original drafts, private diaries, personal letters, paintings, photographs, production stills and other objects, the Morgan exhibition TENNESSEE WILLIAMS—NO REFUGE BUT WRITING examines the glory years of the great American playwright and his struggle for self-expression during a repressive time.

 

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS—NO REFUGE BUT WRITING, through May 13.

MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York City.

themorgan.org/tennessee-williams

Broadway poster, book cover, author photograph.

Five O’Clock Angel image credit: Knopf.

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tennessee-williams

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

“I am glad that in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, we are getting off the chest some of the terrible things that we have to say about human fate. I want to keep the core of the play very hard… as hard and fierce as Big Daddy… A terrible black anger and ferosity, a rock-bottom honesty. Only against this background can his moments of tenderness, of longing, move us deeply.

“This is a play about good bastards and good bitches. I mean it exposes the startling co-existence of good and evil, the shocking duality of the single heart.” — Tennessee Williams, in a 1954 letter to Elia Kazan*

Jack O’Connell and Sienna Miller star as Brick and Maggie (Colm Meaney is Big Daddy) in the best revival in years of Williams’ 1955 classic. Recently on the boards at the Apollo in London, this raw-edged Young Vic production was directed by Benedict Andrews.

The first of two L.A. Theatre Works presentations of the National Theatre Live broadcast will screen this weekend at UCLA.

 

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF—NTLive screening

Sunday, February 25, at 3 pm.

Saturday, March 10, at 3 pm.

James Bridges Theater, UCLA

235 Charles E. Young Drive, Los Angeles.

Sienna Miller and Jack O’Connell in the 2017 Young Vic production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE — SCOTTISH BALLET

The Scottish Ballet heightens the eroticism of Tennessee Williams’ A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in a Los Angeles premiere this weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“Instead of what was once a reflection of a misogynistic society where feminism had no say, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, working closely with acclaimed theater director Nancy Meckler, lends a unique female voice to the choreographic process.” — Rachel S. Moore, president and CEO of the Music Center

“Stylistically, [STREETCAR’s] inventive minimalism looks just as good a second time around. The sets are constructed out of packing cases, deftly maneuvered by the dancers to shunt the action from a streetcar to a New Orleans club, to the grimly sparse interior of Stanley’s apartment. Unfussy lighting and costumes provide pitch-perfect period detail as well as the symbolic underpinning of the plot: the bloom of bright red blood on Alan’s shirt, the crimson flowers for the dead, the naked lightbulb under which Blanche flutters.” — Judith Mackrell*

 

SCOTTISH BALLET—A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, Friday and Saturday, May 19 and 20, at 7:30 pm. Sunday, May 21 at 2 pm.

DOROTHY CHANDLER PAVILION, Music Center, downtown Los Angeles

musiccenter.org/about/Our-Programs/Glorya-Kaufman-Dance/1617-Season/Scottish-Ballet-A-Street-Car-Named-Desire/

 

*Judith Mackrell, “Erotic and Tragic Ballet,” The Guardian, April 1, 2015:

theguardian.com/stage/2015/apr/01/streetcar-named-desire-sadlers-wells-scottish-ballet-review

Eve Mutso as Blanche DuBois with Andrew Peasgood as Alan in A Streetcar Named Desire
 
Eve Mutso as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Nancy Meckler and choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa Photograph by Andy Ross Image credit: Scottish Ballet

Eve Mutso as Blanche Du Bois in the original 2012 Scottish Ballet production of A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Nancy Meckler and choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.
Photographs by Andy Ross
Image credit: Scottish Ballet