Suddenly Last Summer (2025)

Suddenly, last summer, a son that is dead. Suddenly, last summer, a niece off her head. So she locks her up and throws away the key, but this summer opts for a lobotomy instead. Since her niece, it appears, just won't shut up, about her son and his all-too-shocking hookups. It hurts to lose a son, no-one can argue that, but what hurts more is to be made runner-up.

Ξαφνικά πέρσι το καλοκαίρι ή αλλιώς πώς να κάνετε ένα θεατρικό έργο να μοιάζει με θρίλερ.

Σκοτεινό.. Ανατριχιαστικό.. Κλειστοφοβικό..
Η πλοκή τοποθετείται σε έναν άγριο κήπο με σαρκοβόρα φυτά.
Και είναι όλα εδώ. Συμβολισμοί, ομοφυλοφιλία, ανθρωποφαγία, Οιδιπόδεια συμπλέγματα, λοβοτομές, χορηγίες, κοινωνική ανισότητα, υποκρισία της αμερικάνικης κοινωνίας, συντηρητισμός. Στα χέρια όποιου άλλου αυτό το μίγμα θα έμοιαζε θεατρική σπλατερια που εύκολα θα άγγιζε τα όρια του γελοίου.
Ο Williams βουτάει στους δαίμονές του (το έργο έχει έντονα αυτοβιογραφικά στοιχεία και γράφεται μετά από μια μακρά περίοδο ψυχανάλυσης του συγγραφέα) και μας παραδίδει ένα δυνατό έργο με δυο από τις πιο σπουδαίες ηρωίδες της θεατρικής του εργογραφίας.

Καλή ανάγνωση!

Suddenly Last Summer

Tennessee Williams' short play "Suddenly Last Summer" is both beautiful and lurid. The play was first presented off-Broadway in 1959 together with another short work. The play consists of one act in four scenes and is usually presented without intermission. It is best read in a single sitting to capture the drama's cumulative effect.

The play explores loneliness, the ways in which people abuse and destroy one another, and the difficulties of looking below the surface of one's actions. The lurid components of the play center on a depiction of cannibalism, with homosexuality involving young boys and incest also playing large roles. The play is set in 1936 in a large, ornate Victorian mansion in New Orleans with an extensive garden that resembles a tropical jungle. A prominent and symbolic feature of the garden is a large carnivorous plant, a Venus flytrap. The two primary characters are the mansion's owner, an elderly, strong-willed, and ill widow, Mrs. Venable, and her niece from a much poorer part of the family on her husband's side, Catharine Holly. A psychiatrist, Dr. Cukrowicz, known as Dr. Sugar for short, also plays an important role.

In its lyricism and control of language, "Suddenly Last Summer" is as much a poem as a drama. The action of the play surrounds two lengthy monologues, the first delivered by Mrs Venable at the play's beginning and the second given by Catharine at the conclusion. The character who never appears on stage is Mrs. Venable's son, Sebastian, who dies under mysterious circumstances at the age of 40. At the time of his death, Sebastian was travelling with Catharine and Mrs. Venable suspects her of complicity in the death. Catharine has been telling a shocking story about the death, which only comes out at the end of the play, and Mrs. Venable has had her committed to an insane asylum run by Catholic sisters. She wants to have a lobotomy performed on Catharine and has invited the Doctor, a pioneer of the new operation, to the mansion.to examine the prospective patient with the lure of a large research grant if he agrees to perform the surgery.

Mrs. Venable tells the story of a Sebastian who was reclusive, sensitive, chaste, and a poet who wrote one poem every summer and traveled in the company of his mother. When Mrs Venable suffered a stroke, Sebastian invited Catharine, a party girl who had been taken advantage of by a married man, to accompany him. Catharine had been depressed before the trip as a result of her own experiences. When she returns she appears most distraught by her experience with Sebastian and by her subsequent confinement. Mrs. Venable wants to silence Catharine from telling her story.

The play builds up to Catharine's final monologue, delivered under a truth serum administered by the doctor, in which she explains how she and Mrs. Venable before her had served as a procurer of young boys for Sebastian. While she and Sebastian were travelling in the West Indies, Sebastian met his grisly fate when he was cannibalized by a large group of poor young African American boys many of whom he had victimized. The revelation comes at the climactic moment at the end of the play, and all the action and symbolism of the brief work inexorably prepares for it.

The play has a strongly spiritual component amid the gruesomeness with the many incidents of cruelty in the human and natural world juxtaposed against the mystery of God and goodness. The nun who accompanies Catharine from the asylum, the psychiatrist, and Sebastian each add a religious dimension to the work. Catherine quotes Sebastian saying to her at one point in their trip: "Somebody said once or wrote, once: "We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!'" Many readers see the influence of Euripides "Bacchae" in Williams' taut and provocative play.

"Suddenly Last Summer" has a strong autobiographical component. Throughout his life, Williams was plagued by guilt over a lobotomy performed on his sister in the early 1940s. When he wrote the play, Williams had begun seeing a psychiatrist. Williams' Dr. Sugar is a difficult character to assess and to perform in the play. He is better seen as an active participant rather than as an observer of the drama. Williams' own psychiatrist remarked that "of the many portrayals of the role of the psychiatrist that I have seen on stage and film, this rang truest. It has a quality of thoughtful, unpretentious, competence of responsibility and humanity. And he did not have bed-side manner oozing out of every pore." The play can be understood without knowing anything of William's life as a portrayal of the harshness of the human condition even in the middle of the search for beauty and love.

This play is available separately and in the second of the two volume of the Library of America compilation of Williams' plays. John Lahr has recently written an outstanding biography of Williams, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh" which discusses "Suddenly Last Summer" among many other Williams works. The quotation from Williams' psychiatrist is taken from Lahr's book.

Robin Friedman

This one act play is set at Mrs Venable's house where her deceased son, Sebastian, had a jungle-garden, including carnivorous plants. Sounds of savage beasts and birds add to the mood. Mrs Venable is trying to discredit the testimony of Catherine, her niece, about her last day with Sebastian. She is trying to persuade a doctor to perform a lobotomy on her niece so Catherine will never be able to speak about the events to Mrs Venable's high society friends in New Orleans. After the doctor gives Catherine the truth serum, she tells the story about her cousin, a homosexual poet who met a horrible death in Cabeza de Lobo.

Tennessee Williams had started psycholanalysis when he was writing the play. His mother had insisted that his disturbed sister Rose undergo a lobotomy. Williams often uses events from the lives of members of his family in his plays. This play sent chills through me, reading how society, greedy relatives, and mental health professionals of the 1950s could treat a traumatized young woman.

Well god damn.

What a powerful one act play. Los Olvidados have the last laugh as playboy poet walks on the wild side. The waning witness is left with a song from the Ramones.

I loved the pacing, the creak of device and the eruptions of madness. I think a few scenes revealing the interior life of the doctor would’ve heightened matters.

Pertenezco a una generación que pudo ver en la tv muchas de las adaptaciones de la obra de Tennessee Williams. Sin haber leído los libros ni estar preparados, cualquier fin de semana te sumergías en la desesperación de Williams, en la mirada esquizofrénica de Elizabeth Taylor o en la profunda locura de Marlon Brando, a pelo.

Pero, no voy a empezar con discursos rancios sobre si lo de antes era mejor o no; porque ahora, con un chasquido de mis dedos cual capitán Wade Hunnicutt, puedo ver cuando quiera cualquier adaptación de la obra de Williams y no tengo que esperar a que la pongan en la tele. Así que, cada cual que elija lo que prefiera.

Respecto al libro, me ha gustado mucho aunque ni es bonito ni agradable, pero contiene toda la locura y la enfermedad que puede engendrar el ser humano y cuyo epicentro es la familia; sí, la familia como origen de todas las neurosis y de la maldad. La locura reflejada en ese amor malsano de una madre por un hijo que permite que éste haga lo que quiera y dé rienda suelta a su apetito sexual. La familia, madre y hermano de Catherine, como buitres carroñeros revoloteando alrededor del dinero que quieren picotear. Catherine, imagen de la hermana de Williams, tan bella como loca y utilizada como señuelo sexual por el protagonista.

Todo huele mal en esta obra, nada se salva: enfermedad, locura, perversión, pedofilia.. y todo con un final donde asistimos a la única sublimación posible del protagonista.

Una lectura para tardes asfixiantes de verano.

Una obra corta pero poderosa, obra de suspenso. El teatro en texto no es lo mio la vdd, se lee rapido, es cortito, me gustó la descripción de escenografía y actores saliendo entre actos :)

I just thought it was okay. I was confused on certain parts and was in love with others.

Ne sumnjam da je film maestralan, radujem mu se unapred.

Montgomeri Klift, Elizabet Tejlor i Ketrin Hepburn - ne može bolje. Idealno za ovu burnu dramu neponovljivog Tenesija Vilijamsa.

Oyunun ayrıntılı çözümlemesi için;

Bahar Kuşanaç, 20. Yüzyıl Dramasında İmajinatif Karşıt Diskur Olarak Anaerkil Mitografya, DEÜ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitütüsü Karşılaştırmalı Edebiyat Anabilim Dalı Karşılaştırmalı Edebiyat Programı Yüksek Lisans Tezi, İzmir- 2019

بعد از خواندن نمایشنامه فیلمی را که از روی این اثر ساخ��ه بودند دیدم. داستان فیلم نسبت به نمایشنامه تغییرات زیادی داشت ولی به نظرمن نقطه اوج داستان را در فیلم بهتر درآورده بودند

En la cafetería de Audrey
Trivial literario, temporada Primavera/Verano (2020)

Obra de teatro oscura que tiene versión cinematográfica que en mi opinión supera al libro.

I love TN Williams. Streetcar, this play, Cat/Roof, and The Glass Menagerie are plays I could watch over and over. Katherine Hepburn as Violet and Liz Taylor as Catherine are iconic in the filmic rendition (1959) film (which I highly recommend!). The hungry, devouring birds and the truth that Violet wants to excise out of Catherine’s brain about Sebastian, the devouring poet—haunting and violent. I like Williams’ study of power dynamics among the haves vs. have-nots, and I feel the destruction and horror this text raises through a queer reading; the self-loathing/the ‘cut.’ It’s brutal, of course, but I admire it so much for the sterling courage it took to create this text during the 1950s. A brutal masterpiece.

4,5 *
Uma excelente surpresa!
Uma pequena peça de teatro com muito conteúdo e bem interessante do início ao fim. Adorei, não fosse o final e teria dado as 5 estrelas. Uma espécie de thriller com muito suspense, num equilíbrio muito bem conseguido entre entretenimento e provocação para a reflexão. Incómodo e estimulante.
Recomendo, lê-se em poucas horas e vale bem a pena. Quero ler mais títulos deste autor!

video sobre esta minha experiência de leitura em:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOH7c...

post no blogue (inclui o video) em:
http://linkedbooks.blogspot.com/2018/...

Parece ser que lo mío no es el teatro. Al menos no para leerlo. Me resulta bastante desconcertante la forma sobreactuada en la que se expresan los personajes, pero entiendo que es una característica de este genero.

La historia es un poco absurda. Es un drama familiar bastante surrealista, pero al ser teatralizado, hace que por momentos, ciertas acciones parezcan cómicas.
Creo que me hubiera gustado más si lo hubiera visto representado, pero como lectura no me ha llamado mucho la atención. A su favor, que es una lectura muy cortita y se lee en un rato.

Williams brings the monsters out in full regalia. The chef de monstre is Violet. She's the grand dame of a New Orleans family. She had an oddly close relationship to her son, Sebastian, who was murdered in Europe the last summer. Now, she wants to cover up the entire murder and to do this she wants to give her niece a lobotomy. This might get her niece to stop telling the truth of what happened. Even if it doesn't stop her from talking, it will probably stop anyone from listening to her or taking her seriously. As the grand dame, she is more than willing to use her control over the money to persuade her niece's mom to agree to the lobotomy.

Then there's her charming son, Sebastian. Yes, he's dead, but his ghost haunts and drives the entire play. He did nothing in his life except write one poem each summer for twenty-five years. Even the ones who liked him admit that he, at most, could only use people. And he only liked to have beautiful people around him. Any deformity would drive him away. So, when his Mom had a stroke, he basically disowned his mom and took his cousin under his wing.

Being under Sebastian's wing was not such a glorious position. He used first his Mom, and then his cousin, as pimps to procure poor but pretty European boys to have sex with. How this worked is a mystery to me. With his niece, he had her wear a see through white swim suit, and somehow the sight of her through the swimsuit drew guys to her and led to gay sex for him. Go figure. And his mom took on that role beforehand? I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that, but on second thought, I'd rather not.

Catherine, the niece, is a lunatic. Why? As near as I can figure, its because she tells the truth about the murder she saw, and because she did not respond very well to being raped a few years before. I think she's become an inconvenience, and she does show some emotional instability, but would this really have been enough to get her committed? I doubt its realistic, but it suits the situation here.

Catherine's mom and her brother are only concerned about themselves and the money. At the start, the brother seems the worst of the two. He's definitely the more boorish. In the end, he appears to relent. But it seemed pretty clear to me that the mother wants the money, and her daugher is in an institution anyway. What real harm would come from a lobotomy? It would just help everyone forget something unpleasant.

And what was the shameful thing that needs to be hidden? What truth does Catherine say that must be hidden? She claims that Sebastian got killed and partially eaten by the kids he was trying to lure into sexual relationships. From an emotional standpoint, I can see how this might be really powerful. But as a reader of horror and mysteries, I don't buy it. Whatever happened to Sebastian, there would at least be some substantial forensic evidence. And given his position as a rich American, the story would get out, no matter what Catherine said.

Some beautiful writing here, and on the metaphorical level, I think it worked very well. But if it were a dimestore mystery, I'd dismiss it because the writer hadn't done his homework.

Weak but manageable, entertaining enough. The setup is good, and we feel for Catherine and the plight she is in. Only it’s too predictable, although that could be a question of setting since the concept is outdated for us modern readers. It may have been innovative or original back then—to blame someone as crazy even though they may not be, just to cover up something... it’s quite the horror scenario when one thinks about it. It’s a one act play and very linear, which makes it a quick read without much complexity or subtleness. I didn’t care much for the ending, it was rather shallow and unconvincing.

Definitivamente, tengo que leer más teatro. Me gusta lo fluido que es, los dialogos, imaginarme a los personajes en el escenario, el juego de luces, las voces pisándose unas a otras. Es un género que siempre disfruto, ya sea comedia, misterio o, como este caso, un oscuro drama, un juego de mentiras, una pelea entre el amor y el odio, entre uno tiene y uno quiere, con un final (real o no) que no dejará indeferente a nadie.

Me gustó!!!

No me a gustado para nada, es demasiado rara.

I'm in love with everything that Tennessee Williams wrote.

I read this play hoping it would go a bit deeper than the adaptation with Elizabeth Taylor. As it turns out, the film has more to offer in terms of developing the scenes and the horror of Catherine's situation. The story itself, while eerily memorable, remains a morbid, twisted tale that doesn't seek to go deeper than shock value or hold much back in terms of explanation. I feel there is the skeleton of a psychological thriller here, but it begs for a retelling.

i don't understand a lot of the sh*t that i used to do when i was younger, but most of all, i REALLY don't get what i was going through ages 13-15 when i was watching the 1959 film adaptation of this play every. single. night.

i cannot imagine that was great for my development.

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i have always said that this is my absolute favorite american play of all time and i think about it all the time until i miss it so much that i have to pick it up for a reread

one of those times

my ex keeps asking me what i love about this play, and i can never articulate it (so don't get your hopes up, here). perhaps it's its concern with involuntary, and incorrect, institutionalisation, or its brutal imagery; perhaps it's its meditations upon what it is to be a poet. whatever it may be, the work stirs many an emotion in me, corny as it sounds.

No me ha gustado. Claro, que leer teatro tampoco es de mi agrado.

I was first introduced to this play via late night television. It's a true Southern Gothic play by Tennesse Williams inspired by some real experiences in his life and that of his friends who took to enjoying and exploiting the sexual delights of Tangiers, Morocco. The adaptation of this play for the movies was done by no other than Gore Vidal and starred Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn and Montgomery Cliff and I tell you I was mesmerized by this play, it burned, it sizzled with dark melodrama and a subtext of confused sexuality and incest. I loved it. Liz was gorgeous. Kate was great. So when I got my hands on the play in paperback I was game.
The plot centers on a young woman who, at the insistence of her wealthy aunt, is being evaluated by a psychiatric doctor to receive a lobotomy after witnessing the death of her cousin Sebastian Venable while travelling with him the previous summer. It's amazing how many people were willing to hush women if they inconvenienced them by lobotomizing them. Think Rosemary Kennedy, apparently this was the fate for Rose Williams Tennesssee's older sister.
The late Sebastian's wealthy mother, Violet Venable, ( a monstrous, heartless, woman) makes every effort to deny and suppress the potentially sordid truth about her son and his demise. Toward that end, she attempts to bribe the doctor by offering to finance a new wing for the underfunded facility if he lobotomizes her niece, thereby removing any chance that the events surrounding her son's death might be revealed by Catherine's "obscene babbling."
You have to remember that this was set in the late 30's and homosexuality was deeply closeted and people could be imprisoned for it, so people had to stay in the closet, this is also set in the deep south in New Orleans, in Esplanade Avenue with a sub-tropical patio and then set in Tangiers - where many men then used the young natives for their special delight. So there are all kinds of internal conflict, for Sebastian (his sexuality) for Catherine (her sanity) for Violet (her incest) true Gothic.

Originally, I read this play in high school. I went through the motions of pretending that I was shocked by the ending. Really, I was just tired of reading selection after selection from that particular English teacher. I know I wasn't really paying attention to the words, but some of them must have stuck...not in my throat.

I watched the movie Playing by Heart and I understood the reference to this play, but I couldn't recall specific plot details, and it really bugged me. However, I didn't re-read this play until I found out that I could see the play performed.

Super creepy plot! If you think you have a controlling mother, you really should read this play or see it performed. You'll probably feel much better about your relationship with your mother. Sebastian's mother is intent on hiding who her son truly was. She's committed to having her niece committed and lobotomized to keep those family secrets about Sebastian.

As much as I love seeing plays performed, I would advise that you read this one first before hitting the theater. Just so you're prepared. Otherwise, I could see feelings of complete disgust, contempt, frustration, anger and the like consuming you.

I'd seen the movie last year and it mesmerized me.
This so far is my favorite Williams play. From the very first line to the last. New Orleans. A hot tropical greenhouse garden. Strange exotic plants. Birds squawking in the background. An aging southern belle with subconscious incestuous desires for her gay son and her unwillingness to hear the truth about his violent death on a white hot day in Mexico.
A young woman interned and threatened with this new radical operation meant to cut the madness out her brain.
The madness being what she knows and the power she yields.
The blond doctor trying to get to the bottom of a story that is without one.
And of course Sebastian. Mysterious and self destructive Sebastian with his poems of summer and his memory of the Encantas baby turtles hatched out of their mothers eggs on a beach running fleeing to the water while above the sky fills with blackness, a mass of birds, hungry for flesh.
A disturbing, seductive play, perfect from start to finish.
I won't soon forget it.

De repente, el último verano es una obra tan sofisticada como intensa, abordando unos temas escabrosos y turbios de un modo que deja perplejo. Es la primera obra de Tennessee Williams que leo y me ha encantado. En menos de 50 páginas es capaz de contar toda una historia de su torturado mundo. Es surrealista y potente.

Fue llevada al cine por Joseph L. Mankiewicz en el 59, contando con un maravilloso reparto de estrellas como Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor y Montgomery Clift. Además, él participó en la producción junto a Gore Vidal, por lo que el resultado fue una cinta absorbente y perturbadora. Sus interpretes, sobre todo destaco a Hepburn y a Taylor, gozan de una elegancia del viejo Hollywood y un talento modélico.

Si te acercas a la obra teatral, recomiendo encarecidamente darle la oportunidad también a su maravillosa adaptación.

Tremenda obra de teatro, perteneciente a eso que llamaron gótico sureño . Los que tenemos una edad pudimos ver en nuestra juventud multitud de películas del Hollywood clásico que recreaban las obras de Tennesee Williams y demás autores de la época. Tremendos dramas donde se sacaba lo peor de cada uno, fruto de la mente atormentada de un autor que refleja las miserias de la familia, de la impostura social, la hipocresía, la falta de sentimientos por quien es diferente.
Leer teatro no es fácil, no está hecho para ser leído y en todo caso me quedo con la película que adaptó esta obra, con Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn y Montgomery Clift, que siempre merece la pena recuperar.