Suddenly Last Summer: the poetry of a gothic campy melodrama
10 Aug 2023

by Drew Rowsome - Photos courtesy of Riot King

Suddenly Last Summer is a problematic play. Filled with sumptuous poetic imagery the text offers the cast cascades of evocative words that resemble arias of repressed emotions. A text to really sink their teeth into, scenery to chew. Everyone is an unreliable narrator with an agenda they are determined to fulfill, but less eager to reveal. The plot revolves around a horrific incident that has already happened, so the entire play is exposition. Exposition that, depending on which version is believed, has hideous consequences for one character. Or equally appalling consequences in the minds of the more calculated others. The carnivorous plants, clouds of ravenous birds, and musically maniacal naked children, are revealed to be minor compared to the wounds and carnage the proper and status conscious characters are prepared to casually inflict upon each other. Suddenly Last Summer is a melodrama that rips at class distinctions, colonialism and struggles with conflicting views of the lust that dare not speak its name.

Make that dared not speak its name. Suddenly Last Summer is severely hampered by both its time period and the time in which it was written. Taking place in New Orleans in 1935, Tennessee Williams penned the potboiler in the late 1950s, when the word "gay" had yet to replace multiple slurs or clinical designations. The characters dance around the deceased Sebastian Venable's sexual proclivities and may not even have the words to describe them. His mother, Violet, insists he is a poet whose life and work were inseparable: "His life was his occupation." Her memories, her descriptions, of him are golden. And chilling. He surrounded himself with an entourage of the "talented, beautiful and young," one of which she was. Until Sebastian, who she claims was ageless as is she, hit 40 and she had a minor stroke paralyzing one side of her face. She was traded in for a younger, prettier version, Sebastian's cousin Catherine. There is only one brief exchange that explains Violet's, and then Catherine's, function in Sebastian's world and in 2023 it is crystal clear.

What is problematic is that Sebastian, who is not a sympathetic character other than he apparently blazed with charisma, is explicitly tied to the carnivorous tendencies of the metaphors. Williams lauds Sebastian and condemns him. His sex tourism appetites mirror Williams's documented own and, from the text, so does the societal guilt. He is also unable to explain, except obliquely and by inference, why Sebastian's death is a scandal instead of a tragedy. Refracted through the three time periods, it is a lot to digest and leaves one's head spinning afterwards. However during this Riot King production, one just hangs on and lets the delicious guilty pleasure of larger than life characters declaiming stunningly composed prose that is flowery on the surface, and poisonously vicious just beneath, wash over one. We meet Violet first and Elaine Lindo makes a canny choice that is as deceptive as Violet herself. Presenting as a frail old woman who has been wronged, Lindo uses the intimacy of the staging to great advantage. We have to lean in to hear her seductive entreaties, to catch her if she falls, allowing Lindo to let us see her eyes dart, gauging how her deception is working on her prey. We are privy to the carnivore just under the genteel skin.

Her dance partner in the opening scenes is Dr Cukrowicz—"call me Dr Sugar"—who is having a moral crisis of his own. Ryan Iwanicki begins stoic and professional before losing his bearings in the face of Violet's scheme and tantalizing offers. The two navigate a torrent of words and imagery while managing to keep it from being stagey. And just avoid camp. This sets the stage for the introduction of other characters who do dabble in camp. Carling Tedesco is Violet's grasping sister and Brendan Kinnon her son who will stop at nothing to usurp Sebastian's former glory. Jobina Sitoh is a long-suffering nurse/nun, while Shada Rahbari is the servant with immense eyes and a peculiar walk lifted from The Divine Miss M. But it is Lindsey Middleton (Bone Cage, Girls! Girls! Girls!) who then gets to shine. Catherine has been broken by shock therapy and institutionalization in order to keep the secret of Sebastian's death hidden. Now she is given more drugs, hypnotized and is to recount her "truth" to Dr Sugar in a probably futile attempt to avoid being lobotomized. Piled on top of the trauma of witnessing Sebastian's death, Catherine is a mess. 

Middleton grasps the monologue and spins it into a fractured and mesmerizing tour de force. Clawing the air like one of the carnivorous birds, stumbling and struggling, Middleton starts at a crescendo and then slowly, agonizingly, ratchets it further. The intensity is such that the camp, melodramatic and 1950s coded and awkward euphemisms barely register. We are drawn into the madness and horror of what she believes she saw, no matter how illogical and overwritten it is. Middleton and Lindo make tasty antagonists, and director Kathleen Welch keeps the rest of the cast involved if on the periphery. They are focussed with only minimal amounts of distracting stage business to cover when they aren't involved. It is an intriguing production of an even more intriguing play. While the confusion at the core of the text is never resolved or explicated, the drama and the poetry is enough to carry the evening. The attempted verisimilitude of a carnivorous garden is a plus, but striking a balance between realistic and overheated is probably impossible given the conflicted nature of the play itself. From Williams's torture rises great poetry and near catharsis.