Set in the hothouse of New Orleans’ Garden District, Suddenly Last Summer has all the hallmarks of a Tennessee Williams masterpiece: exotic locales, tortured psyches, glorious, lyrical language, and Williams’ gift for creating vivid, unforgettable characters. An elderly socialite mourns the death of her poet son, who died under mysterious circumstances while vacationing at an island resort. Eager to protect her son’s image, she hires a doctor to silence the only witness to the tragic event–but the shattering truth fights its way to the surface, as it always does in Williams’ world. In the great Avant Bard tradition of providing audiences an opportunity to see something they may have read but have never seen–or have seen the movie version but have never seen it on-stage–audiences can learn first-hand what happened last summer, and experience the unique and exhilarating beauty of this quintessential Williams classic.
This production includes a prologue of “Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen” by Tennessee Williams featuring Jonathan Del Palmer as man and Miss Kitty as Woman.