A curveball this week: a sixty-year-old play that’s nothing like the plays that get written today. The story follows a defrocked minister who’s having a nervous breakdown triggered by weakness of the flesh. It’s a story about wounded souls at the end of their ropes—about people fighting to hold onto their last bit of goodness—with strong, conflicted female characters when females weren’t supposed to be that way.
The trademark Williams melodrama is prevalent, but it doesn’t detract from the beautiful story or the universal theme. Because the play was written in an era when playwrights treated their work as literature rather than as blueprints for actors, it’s also eminently readable, with the narrative feel of a novel. You have to be cold as ice not to love this book (and the John Huston movie is brilliant, too). Reviewed on June 10, 2021