Suddenly!

Suddenly Last Summer is a play that happens suddenly. If you don't pay attention, you might miss it. It felt like as soon as it got started, it ended. The main character is never on stage but is the most three dimensional thing on stage. There could have been separate plays could have been written about each of the other characters, but Williams didn't feel like it, so everyone else is there simply as a vehicle for the main character.

And yet I was kind of charmed by the whole thing. I know that in the movie version, which I haven't seen, Mrs. Venable is played by Katharine Hepburn so I had her voice in my head reading all of those lines, and that was just endlessly entertaining. The set, in my mind, was this magnificent, science fiction inspired land - the love child of George Lucas and Willy Wonka. It all seemed so fantastical.

I think that Sebastian was meant to be closeted and that was the reason he needed Catherine and the reason for his death. It makes sense anyway. But then I think about youth and age, which certainly came up a lot. Sebastian's death, at least the version we are told, is pretty similar to the story about the sea turtles that Mrs. Venable tells. The sea turtles have just hatched and are trying to escape to the sea, leaving the protective shell their mother left for them. In a way, Sebastian tries to do the same thing, and like the baby sea turtles, is devoured.

Or he could be gay and thus cannot survive. The end.

Also, things I've been neglecting to mention

Execution of Justice - kind of dense and weighty but said a lot silently.

Venus - a very cool basket.