Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer: gay Southern Gothic in a carnivorous garden

31 Jul 2023 - photos courtesy of Riot King

"I have loved this play for a long time," says director Kathleen Welch of Suddenly Last Summer. "One of the reasons I wanted to put it on is that it is not very well known, which I hope will mean that audiences will be able to approach it with fresh eyes and less preconceptions than some of Tennessee Williams's more well known work. It is a strange and disturbing play but the text has so much depth and invites so many questions both for the audience and the actors. An important part of my approach is to not try and answer too many of the questions that this play invokes. People can draw many conclusions as to what Tennessee Williams was trying to say when he wrote this play, but it’s impossible to know and I look forward to leaving audiences uncomfortable and uncertain. I think the audiences will be surprised by the more horrific elements of this story as well as its unique structure where so much of the action has already taken place before the play begins. I hope audiences respond strongly to this play, either in the positive or the negative, and I hope that it leaves audiences with uncertainty as to its meaning."

Suddenly Last Summer is a highly poetic play that embraces both melodrama and camp. The action takes place in a "carnivorous garden" and revolves around a formidable grande dame mother's denial of her dead son Sebastian's promiscuous homosexuality. And the scary lengths, lobotomies, she will go to in order to keep that secret hidden. It is Southern Gothic to a sweaty steamy extreme. "It is impossible to view the play as an audience at that time would’ve," says Welch. "However, I think the core concepts around the shame that being LGBTQ could bring on one’s family and the absolute need to hide parts of yourself can be just as relevant today, even though attitudes about it are so different." This production is being mounted in a peculiar time for LGBTQers. The enforced closet of the play seems firmly in the past, but there is much political work being done to attempt to make closets de rigueur once again. "One of the most interesting things about this play is that it is set significantly earlier than it was written," says Welch. "I think we, as modern audiences, can blur together recent history. But this play is set in 1936, and it was written in 1958. So it was always a play about an earlier time and set of attitudes. In this way, I think it can have a universal appeal and the questions it raises can be as relevant now as they were then."

Welch says that the cast is having a lot of fun navigating Williams's poetic language. "The text can be dense and difficult at times but there is just so much there to pull from and such beauty in his words that it’s hard not to revel in it. As for the southern accents, they also provide such a window into who these people are and what this world is." Including Elaine Lindo who is cast as Violet Venable, one of Williams's most dramatic and simmering female roles. "We were definitely nervous about finding our Violet," says Welch. "It is a lot easier to find younger actors for an indie production than older ones. And for Violet, her age is an important part of her character. However we were lucky enough to find Elaine, who is doing a fantastic job. And really enjoying herself in the process. When famous actors have played your role in the past, I think it is very hard not to compare yourself to them, but it is important not to." The list of divas who have portrayed Violet Venable is formidable  with Katharine Hepburn devouring the scenery in the film version. "I didn’t recommend that anyone watch the movie version beforehand because all it does is make you rethink your choices. Lindsay Middleton [Bone Cage, Girls! Girls! Girls!], who plays Catherine in our show, has such a wonderful interpretation of her, but it wouldn’t be as wonderful if she was trying to play it in the way Elizabeth Taylor does. However we might watch the film as a company once the show is all over."

The film is, if I remember correctly from years ago, a bizarre piece of cinema with repression piled upon the repression within the play. It is an exciting prospect to have the opportunity to see Suddenly Last Summer performed by a modern cast with no fear of the queer. And in a unique setting. "We are very excited to be transforming Sorry Studios into Sebastian’s garden," says Welch. "From the very beginning, I wanted to find somewhere with beautiful, natural light so the audience could feel that they were outside. There is an actual garden just outside that the audience will be able to see and the actors can enter from. We have a lot of plants so far but we are certainly on the hunt for more. We have one little Venus flytrap at the moment, and we’ll hopefully be able to get a larger one too. Sorry Studios is air conditioned, but we are hoping to keep the space fairly warm—within reason—as the heat is a part of the world we’re creating. But we will be selling hand painted fans which the audience can purchase if they would like."