Film Experience Blog (Free subscription) | 07/23/2008
I'm reading A Hell of a Life , Maureen Stapleton 's autobiography right now. She originated the TONY-winning legendary role of Serafina in The Rose Tatoo before Anna Magnani, who Tennessee Williams originally offered it to, made it an Oscar-winning role in the movie version . Her thoughts on acting from great writing: It's always special to appear in a great writer's play; having Tennessee as the author...
Whatsonstage.com (Free subscription) | 07/21/2008
Ten years ago, actor Finbar Lynch starred in the premiere of Tennessee Williams' lost' 1938 play Not About Nightingales, which transferred to Broadway where he was nominated for a Tony Award. This summer, he's co-starring with Catherine McCormack in two plays, Ibsen's A Doll's House and an adaptation of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady, as part of the Peter Hall Company's 20th anniversary season....
DosCentavos.net (Free subscription) | 07/20/2008
I guess I missed this article by Deborah Martin in the Express-News on the upcoming stage performance of Rancho Pancho. "Pancho" is a play based on the relationship between a South Texas Mexican American and playwright Tennessee Williams. The play delves into an area of Williams' well-chronicled life that has not been dealt with much elsewhere: His tumultuous relationship with Pancho Rodriguez, who...
Clear Lake Reflections (Free subscription) | 07/18/2008
Not only did the British actress, Vivien Leigh, seize the part of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," but she furthermore proved herself as a southern american woman in the most heart-wrenching play Tennessee Williams ever devised.What made me...
The Sheila Variations (Free subscription) | 07/18/2008
Clifford Odets (playwright in the 30s and 40s - inspiration to Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, a generation of playwrights - and he inspires still although some of his plays have dated badly) kept a journal throughout his tumultuous life....
A Century of Nerve (Free subscription) | 07/17/2008
My apologies. I could not stop myself from using a Tennessee Williams quote, though I know that it is taken quite out of context, and that I am no Elizabeth Taylor. Well, perhaps I could be an Elizabeth Taylor in her older, battier, hat-with-netting-wearing days . And the quote is accurate, in [...]
San Diego Union (Free subscription) | 07/15/2008
There's an oppressive weight that hangs over Tennessee Williams' “A Streetcar Named Desire” – the heat of a New Orleans summer, the cramped tenement quarters, Stanley Kowalski's brutish nature, and the sexual tension between Stanley and his sister-in-law, Blanche DuBois.
San Diego Union (Free subscription) | 07/13/2008
When Ion Theatre opens its reconceived version of Tennessee Williams' “A Streetcar Named Desire” tonight, it promises to be a boundary-stretching experience for both audiences and the performer playing the brittle Blanche DuBois.
Seattle Times (Free subscription) | 07/10/2008
"A Streetcar Named Desire," the Tennessee Williams classic, gets a terrific, astute staging by Sheila Daniels at Intiman Theatre, says theater critic Misha Berson.
DosCentavos.net (Free subscription) | 07/05/2008
Express-News columnist Deborah Martin had a piece on the San Antonio Classic Theatre's upcoming performance of Rancho Pancho. "Pancho" is a play written by former E-N book editor Gregg Barrios about the little known relationship between Tennessee Williams and Eagle Pass native Pancho Rodriguez. According to the schedule at the Jump-Start theatre in San Antonio, the play is set to be performed on the...
Times Online (Free subscription) | 07/02/2008
If Tom Kalin's latest film was fictional, it might easily be dismissed as lurid melodrama. But Savage Grace is a true story of privilege, sex and murder that combines the overheated camp of soap opera with the toxic family tragedy of a Tennessee Williams play. Proof that truth is sometimes not just stranger than fiction but considerably darker too.
The New Yorker - Arts and Culture (Free subscription) | 06/30/2008
When Euripides’ “The Bacchae” premièred, in 405 B.C., it took the Dionysia prize. Since then, the tragedy has been interpreted by authors as diverse as Joe Orton and Wole Soyinka. Certainly Tennessee Williams must have been inspired by the work, too, given its central premise: a young god named Dionysus . . .
A Day In the Life (Free subscription) | 06/29/2008
On the Kindness of Strangers A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams When I was 13 I unearthed two pieces of interesting horror from digging around in the family secrets. This is what we learn at 13. That box we look to open in knowing who we are, find partially locked by time and hands we cannot know, we search for answers we often cannot handle learning. Pandora. The first revelation was my mom's...
The Pink Flamingo (Free subscription) | 06/24/2008
THE SMELL TEST There are times when things just don’t pass the smell test . In other words, something has an odor of mendacity upon it. (Stolen from Tennessee Williams). I keep going back to the fact that Barack Obama has a Teflon coating that’s been sprayed with PAM and hosed down with the most slippery of non-stick substances. Let’s face it, if the media were playing fair , Hillary Clinton would...
Above Average Jane (Free subscription) | 06/20/2008
Tennessee Williams wrote "A Streetcar Named Desire." Steve Goodman wrote a song about a train called "They City of New Orleans" (made famous by Arlo Guthrie). Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about a boat called "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." However, Willie Nelson has not, to my knowledge, come up with a song about biodiesel. And I don't think anyone has written anything artistic about hybrid...
