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Preview by Paul Nelson
TAGUS
Theatre's latest production, The Kindness of Strangers, explores the
fascinating world of American playwright Tennessee Williams.
Based in part on his memoirs, the play connects the writer's life with the
plays and the marvelous creations that people them. The background is the
sultry atmosphere of 1940s New Orleans.
"The remarkable aspect of Tennessee Williams", said the playwright
Robert Anderson, "is how he transmuted his anguished life into great
plays." Drugs, alcohol, mental instability and a need for casual sexual
encounters all played a part in this anguish. The Kindness of Strangers
is about the links between the man and his creations; about how autobiography
becomes transformed into art.
The stage is peopled with characters real and fictional, well known and unknown.
- " My little company of the faded and frightened, the difficult, the
odd and the lonely" as Tennessee Williams called them. They are presented
against the background of a writer trying to make sense of his own existence.
Despite feelings of loneliness and terror only just this side of despair,
Tennessee Williams still managed to call his life 'remarkably fortunate'.
This is the clue to both the writer and his dramatic creations - they are
survivors against the odds who manage to retain an essential humanity as well
as a kind of hectic courage.
The Kindness of Strangers, compiled by Jonathan Weightman, based on the
life and work of Tennessee Williams, including This Property Is Condemned,
The Lady of Larkspur Lotion and A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot
WITH Amanda Booth, Jonathan Weightman and Celia Williams, directed by
Keith Esher Davis at Greenwich Playhouse, Greenwich Station Forecourt, 189
Greenwich High Road, London SE10. Tickets 020 8858 9256. From 30 July to 18
August, Tuesday to Saturday, at 7.45, Sunday at 4.
RELATED LINKS: Click here
for details of the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival...
WILLIAMS ON INDIELONDON: Fraser lights up Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Click
here for review...
Glenn Close to star in A Streetcar Named Desire. Click here
for details....
