View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Keele Research Repository This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights and duplication or sale of all or part is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for research, private study, criticism/review or educational purposes. Electronic or print copies are for your own personal, non- commercial use and shall not be passed to any other individual. No quotation may be published without proper acknowledgement. For any other use, or to quote extensively from the work, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder/s. 1 Tennessee Williams’ “Plastic Theatre”: an examination of contradiction Susan E. Tyrrell PhD January 2013 Keele University 2 Contents Abstract 3 List of Abbreviations 5 Introduction 6 Section One Influences, Perceptions and Prejudices: The Forming of a Reputation 1940-60 Chapter 1: ProvincetoWn: The Beginnings of Plastic Theatre and Tennessee Williams’ Anti-Realism 14 Chapter 2: The Glass Menagerie: A Dramatic Vision and its Early Reception 30 Chapter 3: Realism and Plasticity: Theatrical RevieWs 57 Chapter 4: Private Tragedy: The Hardening of a Reputation 97 Section Two An Emerging Structure of Feeling: The Sixties and After Chapter 5: Cultural Politics and Cultural Criticism: A Reputation Re-examined 125 Chapter 6: Placing Williams’ Drama in an International Context 149 Chapter 7: Identity, Unity and Contradiction 167 Chapter 8: Considering Identity: A Re-Reading of A Streetcar Named Desire 200 Section Three The Late Plays: A Reputation Re-Assessed Chapter 9: Camino Real: The First of the Late Plays 228 Chapter 10: The Two-Character Play and The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme. Le Monde: Experiments in Metatheatricality 260 Chapter 11: I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel: Experiments in Language 291 Chapter 12: Something Cloudy, Something Clear and Clothes for a Summer Hotel: Experiments in Destabilising Time 319 Conclusion 351 Bibliography 357 3 Abstract This thesis proposes a neW reading of Tennessee Williams Which enables his Work to be seen as a cohesive dramaturgy Which challenges realist and liberal notions of dramatic space, identity, and time. It examines the biographical and historical origins of ‘plastic theatre’, and the aesthetic and philosophical implications of this crucial term. This thesis analyses the development and hardening of Williams’ reputation during the 1940s and 1950s as a realist (or ‘failed’ realist) playWright through an examination of contemporary revieWs and the Work of literary critics such as Raymond Williams and Christopher Bigsby. The thesis argues that the critical reception of Williams during these decades Was inflected by biographical readings Which pathologised Williams and his Work from the perspective of ‘straight’ realism. It considers more recent critical re-evaluations of Williams’ work: including those of David Savran, Annette Saddik and Linda Dorff. These re-evaluations, and Williams’ Work as a Whole, are seen in the cultural, political and historical contexts of the 1950s and 1960s, Which saw the development of the notion that the ‘personal is political’ and a major shift in the ‘structure of feeling’. The thesis goes on to develop a neW theoretical perspective on Williams’ work which draws on the philosophical Work of G.W.R. Hegel’s vieWs on contradiction and his analysis of the master/slave relationship, W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of veiling and Malcolm Bull’s theories of hiddenness. This neW perspective is employed in extended close readings of early successful plays (The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire) as Well as the more problematic later plays (Camino Real, The-Two Character Play, The Remarkable-Rooming House of Mme Le 4 Monde, I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel). The final chapter makes use of Gérard Genette’s theories of narratology to explore the plasticity of time in Something Cloudy, Something Clear and Clothes for a Summer Hotel. 5 List of Abbreviations CCQ David Savran, Communists, Cowboys, and Queers CIT2 C.W.E. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century American Drama, Volume 2 CS Raymond Williams, Culture and Society DIB Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht Enc G.W.R. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences LR Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution MAD Raymond Williams, Modern American Drama Met Aristotle, The Metaphysics MT Raymond Williams, Modern Tragedy PL Raymond Williams, Politics and Letters PR Annette Saddik, The Politics of Reputation RRH Tennessee Williams, The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme Le Monde TTW Tennessee Williams, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams ToT Kenneth Tynan, Tynan on Theatre WT Eric Bentley, What is Theatre? 6 Introduction 7 In the last twenty years there has been a resurgence of interest in Tennessee Williams’ Work Which has prompted a re-examination not only of the earlier and more Well- knoWn plays but also of later Work including, in some cases, his prose Writings. Though Williams’ plays have been consistently performed since the success of The Glass Menagerie in 1944, it has been productions of his successful early plays that have predominated. Gunn lists over 300 productions of Williams’ plays from his earliest Work until 1990.1 HoWever, just seven plays, Written during Williams’ most successful period, from a repertoire of over 70, account for nearly half of these productions: The Glass Menagerie (1944), 46 productions; A Streetcar Named Desire (1945), 31 productions; Summer and Smoke (1947), 17 productions; The Rose Tattoo (1950), 13 productions; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), 16 productions; Sweet Bird of Youth (1956), 13 productions; and The Night of The Iguana (1959), 10 productions. Williams’ later Work (from the early 1960s through to the 1980s) Was poorly received and largely ignored by literary critics before 1990. Those critics Who did Write about Williams during this period, such as Roger Boxhill and Christopher Bigsby, tended to concentrate on examining Williams’ earlier successes rather 1 In Tennessee Williams: A Bibliography, Gunn chronicles in detail the major productions, and many less obvious ones, but his list is not exhaustive, and does not include productions after 1990. 8 than his current Work.2 Those critics Who did comment on Williams’ later output Written after 1960 Were largely negative.3 After the BroadWay production of Night of the Iguana (1959), Williams’ plays Were performed in smaller, more avant-garde theatres on Off- and Off-Off- BroadWay – yet even here his Work failed to make a mark. Williams’ early success, and the view of him as a realist playWright that folloWed from that success, dominated critical analysis until the 1990s. HoWever, as I shall argue, critics such as Boxhill and Bigsby, Who see Williams’ plays as realistic or romantic, do not merely place Williams in inappropriate genres, but offer fundamental and symptomatic mis-readings of Williams’ innovative ‘plastic’ theatre, the rationale and purpose of Which is set out in the Production Notes to The Glass Menagerie (1945). Though Williams only directly refers to ‘plastic’ theatre on a couple of occasions, the aspirations, motivation and techniques set out in the Production Notes inform his entire dramaturgy. In challenging the reading of Williams as a realistic dramatist I have examined the nature of plastic theatre, its philosophical underpinnings in the Work of Hegel, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Malcolm Bull and in Hans Hofmann’s aesthetic notions of plasticity. In so doing I have developed a neW interpretive model Which vieWs Williams’ Work as a cohesive canon. After 1990, hoWever, attitudes toWards Williams and his Work changed. In the US, his Work is noW celebrated at several festivals, most notably at the Tennessee Williams Festival in 2 Steven Stanton’s Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays (1977) exceptionally contains several essays Which deal With later and lesser knoWn Works. 3 Henry HeWes, revieWing Small Craft Warnings, in the Saturday Review (22 April 1972) described it as ‘a play about small people, Who, unlike the impressive sailfish mounted over the bar, have never sailed an inch in their lives’. Julius Novick described The Two-Character Play as ‘an annoying, pretentious, slightly maudlin piece of work, but I found it impossible to dismiss it entirely: there is something haunting about it’ (Village Voice, 8 March 1973). 9 NeW Orleans, Which began in 1986, and the Tennessee Williams ProvincetoWn Festival, Which began in 2006.4 In the UK the National Theatre produced The Night of the Iguana (1992), Sweet Bird of Youth (1994), Not About Nightingales (1998) and The Rose Tattoo (2007) and the Royal Shakespeare Company produced Camino Real (1998). In the last feW years there have been a number of productions of Williams in the UK, in both mainstream and fringe theatre: as Well as The Rose Tattoo, The Glass Menagerie (three productions), A Streetcar Named Desire (two productions), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (two productions including one With an all-black cast), and Suddenly Last Summer, there have also been productions of the lesser knoWn Period of Adjustment, Small Craft Warnings, Spring Storm, Moonies Kids Don’t Cry, This Property is Condemned, Auto Da Fé, Kingdom of Earth and The Two-Character Play. The interest in performing Tennessee Williams’ plays has been matched by considerable critical interest in his Work. This criticism is notable for its focus on Williams’ lesser-knoWn plays and other Writing, and for introducing neW perspectives on his Work. In 1992 David Savran published Communists, Cowboys, and Queers in Which he examined notions of masculinity in Williams’ plays and prose Writing. Savran’s cultural and sexual focus represents a major critical departure from the realistic or romantic readings of earlier critics. In 1999, Annette Saddik – The Politics of Reputation – and Linda Dorff – ‘Theatricalist Cartoons: Tennessee Williams’ Late “Outrageous” Plays’ – placed Williams’ late plays Within a European 4 Of these tWo major festivals, only ProvincetoWn emphasises performing Williams’ plays, including little knoWn Work.