?Tennessee Williams is often referred to as the most poetic voice of modern theater - a man who spun out his characters' dreams and delusions with incomparably lovely language and an aching grace.

But look closely at many of Williams' plays, and you will detect another aspect of his writing - an almost obsessive preoccupation with the notion that life is a vicious snakepit driven by a terrifying Darwinian force. In this world, the powerful wreak havoc with the weak and sensitive; the rich manipulate the poor; the scientists control the visionaries, and the liars control the truth- tellers. This theme was evident in his earliest work - the recently rediscovered "Not About Nightingales" - and it surfaces repeatedly in everything from "A Streetcar Named Desire" to "Night of the Iguana."

This idea is taken to its most extreme in Williams' notorious 1958 play, "Suddenly Last Summer." The 90-minute drama, as fascinating as it is ghoulish, is now receiving a very solid, and at times a truly inspired production by the Eclipse Theatre Company, an ensemble that has spent the last year exploring some of the playwright's less frequently seen works.
On one level, the play is a scorching indictment of the mental health "business" as it existed earlier in this century, when Williams' beloved sister underwent a lobotomy. But alongside this theme are two others - one concerning the gruesome destruction of a homosexual poet, and the second about the primal uprising of the underclass. Williams, it must be said, never played it safe.

He wove his story around one of those hothouse-variety extended families that seemed to thrive in the suffocating air of the Depression-era South. At the center of "Suddenly Last Summer" is Violet Venable (played with imperious precision by Karen Pratt), a wealthy dowager whose unhealthy obsession with her beautiful gay son, a poet named Sebastian, continues a year after his death.

Near the end of his life, Sebastian left his mother behind and traveled with a new "procurer" of boys, his cousin, Catherine (Janelle Snow in a performance of great beauty, intensity and skill). She witnessed his nightmarish punishment (an orgy of cannibalism) - retribution for his search for sex among the homeless boys of some unspecified exotic getaway. Already emotionally unstable, Catherine attempts to tell the truth about this almost sacrificial murder.

But Mrs. Venable will do anything to silence her - keeping the young woman's financially dependent mother (Sandy Borglum) and brother (Rick Kubes) under her thumb, and also trying to coerce Dr. Cukrowicz (well-played by Thomas Jones), who has developed a new lobotomy technique, to experiment on Catherine in exchange for a large research grant.
The production of this very tricky play has been directed with keen intelligence and a steady hand by Lookingglass Theatre ensemble member Thomas A. Cox, who sees to it that all the pieces fall into place with eerie inevitability, yet with something less than hysteria. John Dalton's nicely circular stage, with just a window frame and thin dividing cables (lit by Nathaniel Swift), suggests worlds both hidden and transparent.

And Jenny McKnight's period costumes and Gary Simmers' primordial sound feed the mood of this disturbing drama in which the insect- devouring Venus flytrap is a crucial symbol.? Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times November 11, 1999


?Forty-one years after its premiere, Suddenly Last Summer still has the power to shock--not with its lurid depiction of sexual repression and psychological deviancy but with the parallels Tennessee Williams draws between the brutalities of so-called primitive and civilized cultures. However gruesome Sebastian Venable's death at the hands of West Indian beggars, it pales beside his doting mother's ruthless attempts to silence the only witness to this sordid incident.

Director Thomas J. Cox ignores social indictment in favor of a Grand Guignol approach, however. Karen Pratt's Norma Desmond-sized portrait of the imperious Mrs. Venable sets the tone for a production long on squirmy thrills but devoid of suspense, since it's obvious from the start that Sebastian's mother and her grotesque supporters are batty--obvious not only to us but to the physician who will decide the fate of his helpless charge, Sebastian's cousin. This one-dimensional interpretation allows Thomas Jones to do a frozen-faced turn as the skeptical Dr. Cukrowicz but reduces Janelle Snow's portrayal of the ill-used Catherine Holly to varying degrees of pathetic vulnerability.

The manifestly competent actors here struggle mightily, but all their efforts cannot redeem a disappointing conclusion to Eclipse Theatre's otherwise stellar season devoted to this American master.? Mary Shen Barnidge, Chicago Reader November 12, 1999


?A terrible secret explodes near the end of Tennessee Williams' "SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER." (Let's just say it's something that we now know the Neanderthals did a lot.) Written in 1957, this intriguing and horrific drama erupts in a mansion in the Garden District of New Orleans. There Catherine Holly finds herself haunted by terrifying memories of the death of her too-attractive cousin Sebastian. Catherine's stern Aunt Violet, who refuses to believe her niece's "hideous story," commissions a young doctor to uncover the truth. That sickening secret gets spilled on Saturday when Thom Cox's revival opens in a production by Eclipse Theatre. Cox has strong feelings for Williams' wrenching play: "The characters and their relationships in this beautiful and disturbing drama are rich and complex. The musicality of Williams' language creates a poetic examination of how human beings can more easily destroy each other than care for one another as they pursue their goals and desires -- themes which are highly relevant to our contemporary society." Janelle Snow is Catherine Holly, Karen Pratt plays her aunt and Thomas Jones is the all-revealing doctor. Following "Confessional" and "Eccentricities of a Nightingale," the play completes the theater's all-Williams season.? Lawrence Bommer, Chicago Tribune November 5, 1999