THE RADICALS & AVANT-GARDE 1920–1970

Tennessee Williams brings us into the steamy, gothic heart of American life, especially life in the old South, and he does it with a poet’s touch and a truth-teller’s grit. His plays are lush with desire – sexual longing, yearning for love or escape – and at the same time they seethe with violence, both physical and emotional. He once described his work as depicting “a world of human frustration in which sex and violence underlie an atmosphere of romantic gentility” . That sentence is a perfect encapsulation. In Williams’ universe, genteel manners and soft drawls overlay passions as hot and dangerous as summer lightning.

Consider A Streetcar Named Desire, perhaps his most famous play. On the surface, it’s the story of a fallen Southern belle (Blanche DuBois) visiting her sister in a rough New O ...