Tennessee Williams: One Act Plays

Tennessee Williams

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781408164815
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350161634
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

The peak of my virtuosity was in the one- act plays. Some of which are like firecrackers on a rope. Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams's lesser-known one-act plays reveal a tantalising and fascinating perspective to one of the world's most important playwrights.

Written between 1934 and 1980, the plays of the very young writer, then of the successful Tennessee Williams, and finally of the troubled man of the 1970s, this volume offers a panoramic yet detailed view of the themes, demons, and wit of this iconic playwright.

The volume depicts American life during the Great Depression and after, populated by a hopelessly hopeful chorus girl, a munitions manufacturer ensnared in a love triangle, a rural family that deals "justice" on its children, an overconfident mob dandy, a poor couple who quarrel to vanquish despair, a young "spinster" enthralled by the impulse of rebellion, and, in The Magic Tower, a passionate artist and his wife whose youth and optimism are not enough to protect their 'dream marriage.'

This collection gathers some of Williams's most exuberant early work and includes one-acts that he would later expand to powerful full-length dramas: 'The Pretty Trap,' a cheerful take on The Glass Menagerie, and 'Interior: Panic,' a precursor to A Streetcar Named Desire.
Plays included are: At Liberty, The Magic Tower, Me, Vashya, Curtains for the Gentleman, In Our Profession, Every Twenty Minutes, Honor the Living, The Cast of the Crushed Petunias, Moony's Kid Don't Cry, The Dark Room, The Pretty Trap, Interior: Panic, Kingdom of Earth, I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark on Sundays and Some Problems for The Moose Lodge. The volume also features a foreword by Terence McNally.

SOME PROBLEMS FOR THE MOOSE LODGE

Some Problems for the Moose Lodge was first performed on November 8, 1980, as part of an evening of three short Williams plays titled. Tennessee Laughs, at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It was directed by Gary Tucker; the set design was by Joseph Nieminski; the costume design was by Ellen Ryba; the lighting design was by Robert Christian; and the sound design was by Michael Schweppe. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:

CORNELIUS MCCORKLE	Les Podewell
BELLA MCCORKLE	Marji Bank
CHARLIE MCCORKLE	Scott Jaeck
EMERSON SYKES	Nathan Davis
STACEY	Cynthia Baker
JESSIE SYKES	Rachel Stephens
DR. CRANE	Leonard Kraft

The curtain rises upon an empty living room with a staircase that ascends to a landing where it proceeds in another direction to an unseen story above.

It is a living room that has been lived in by at least two generations. The standing floor lamp with its faded silk shade, dingily fringed, establishes the period in which the room was first furnished for living.

A mantle clock ticks rather loudly for half a minute before there is the sound of persons about to enter the house: the sounds are not vocal but mechanical. An old dog is roused from slumber by these sounds and approaches the door. It swings open to admit Cornelius and Bella McCorkle. They are a middle-class, late-middle-aged couple. He is thin with wispy hairs. She is clumsily gone to fat with an apologetic air; they are very used to each other, with the usual attritions of feelings.

Cornelius sets down the luggage with an exhausted grunt and an indignant glance at Bella whose cardiac asthma has incapacitated her for carrying anything much beside her excess weight. she appears to be dazed until approached by the old dog who licks at her hand.

CORNELIUS: Come on Bella before it starts raining again.

BELLA [to the dog]: Hello, Sweet Boy. Want out in the yard?

CORNELIUS [exhaustedly]: He oughta stay out in the yard. I been tellin’ you for years that dog is a yard dog, Bella, he’s full of ticks and fleas, infests the furniture with ’em.

BELLA [also exhausted]: Sweet Boy is been with us for years. He’s family to me.

CORNELIUS: All right, if you want to claim relations with a flea-bitten ole mongrel, you do that. But I’ll be damned if I’ll acknowledge him as an in-law if you do.

BELLA [sniffling]: This is no kind of conversation to have when we just git back from Memphis where we buried our first-born child.

CORNELIUS [softening with exhaustion or possibly even pity]: Bella, the dog is at the door to go out like you sensibly suggested, so why don’t you let him go do it? [Bella lets Sweet Boy out.] Now shut the door, a sharp wind’s blowin’ in, not good for arthritis. What’s the diff’rence between osteo-arthritis, as the Memphis specialist called it, and regular arthritis? I ast him. He didn’t explain.

BELLA: Maybe age was the only explanation. It’s started rainin’ again. He’ll want back in as soon as he’s done his business in the yard.

CORNELIUS: Smells to me like he’s made some business transactions in the house.

BELLA: On the papers I spread out beside his feed-bowl in the kitchen.

CORNELIUS: The stink of it makes me sick. [Cornelius crosses off by swinging upstage door to kitchen. Bella gasps slightly as she notices a muddy pair of boots by the fireplace.]

BELLA: Cornelius!

CORNELIUS [returning from kitchen with can of beer]: Now what?

BELLA: Look at what’s by the fireplace! Charlie’s boots; he’s back!

CORNELIUS: Been fired again, I guess.

BELLA: This late he must be asleep. I’ll call him but not loud. [Goes panting up to landing and calls softly.] Charlie? Charlie?

CORNELIUS: Bella, you’ve been warned to move slow. Now you run up those stairs like a mountain goat.

CHARLIE’S VOICE ABOVE: —Yeh, Mom, are you back?

CORNELIUS: Hears you call him and asks if you are back.

BELLA: Sweetheart, come down here, baby!

[Two voices, one male and one female, are heard above.]

CORNELIUS: He’s got him a woman up there, brought some hooker here with him.

BELLA: Cornelius, be nice, he didn’t expect us this early.

CORNELIUS: This early is late, twelve twenty-five.

[After a slight pause their younger son Charlie, about twenty-five, appears on the landing in shorts.]

BELLA: Baby, baby, seen your boots by the fire, I knew you were home! [She embraces him, sobbing.]

CORNELIUS: What’s detaining your lady-friend upstairs?

CHARLIE [detaching himself from Bella]: —Aw, yeh, her, Stacey, my steady from Yazoo City. Come down an’ meet my folks.

STACEY [from above]: Just a minute, hon.

CORNELIUS: Gettin’ into her clo’se?

CHARLIE: Both of us was so tired we went straight to bed.

CORNELIUS: I bet.

CHARLIE: How was the funeral, Mom? Did it go off all right?

CORNELIUS: Yeh, perfect. Grave dug. Body interred.

BELLA: We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I can’t discuss it tonight. —You all had supper? Want me to fix you some food? How about an om’lette? Haven’t checked the ice-box but think there’s eggs.

CORNELIUS: Still calls the fridge an ice-box.

CHARLIE: That would be wonderful, Mom.

BELLA [crossing upstage to kitchen door]: With cheese and tomatoes an’ bacon. [She exits to kitchen.]

CORNELIUS: So you lost another job, huh?

CHARLIE: That job was misrepresented to me completely.

CORNELIUS: You mean you found out it involved some work?

CHARLIE: I don’t object to work.

CORNELIUS: As long as you don’t have to do it.

CHARLIE: —Y’look tired, Pop. How’re you feeling?

CORNELIUS: Tired.

[Stacey, Charlie’s girl, appears on the landing, silently, unnoticed. She is obviously pregnant but her face has a childish appeal. She appears to be still engaged in dressing. Charlie notices her and gives her a warning signal to remain out of sight till more completely appareled. Cornelius lumbers to easy chair and flops exhaustedly into it, massaging his belly, still oblivious of Stacey who has retreated into shadow on landing.]

CHARLIE [with a nervous cough]: You all had a long trip? Seem to be sorta done in.

CORNELIUS: Wouldn’t think it possible you could spend six hours getting from here on the Gulf Coast up the river to Memphis but the actual flyin’ time was about two hours or one and a half and the rest was settin’ on our asses in the New Awleuns airport. [Warming up.] They announced three delays on that plane. Each time one was announced your Mom says, “Well, I reckon I’ll have some more coffee.”

CHARLIE: That’s a good deal of coffee with her heart condition an’ pressure.

CORNELIUS: It was less coffee than food. I looked through the window at her and the first time she ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Tennessee Williams: 1911–1983
• Foreword by Terrence McNally
• At Liberty
• The Magic Tower
• Me, Vashya
• Curtains for the Gentleman
• In Our Profession
• Every Twenty Minutes
• Honor the Living
• The Case of the Crushed Petunias
• Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry
• The Dark Room
• The Pretty Trap
• Interior: Panic
• Kingdom of Earth
• I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark on Sundays
• Some Problems for The Moose Lodge
• Notes on the Text
• Bibliographic Sources
• Acknowledgments
• eCopyright