Reviews

The Eccentricities of a Nightingale by Tennessee Williams

itsemma's review

challenging emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

bobbyknndy's review against another edition

1.0

Only read this if you're interested in seeing how Tennessee Williams's talent went way downhill as he aged, and for god's sake never perform it. This is a re-working of his 1948 play SUMMER AND SMOKE, and first performed as THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE in the 1970s. Williams succeeds in cutting or retooling everything that made his earlier work so beautiful. Instead of a wonderful doomed love story between the main characters Alma (representing old-fashioned Southern gentility a la Blanche DuBois) and John (representing animal sexuality a la Stanley Kowalski), Williams emasculates John's role in the play and strips Alma of her Blanche-comparisons, leaving her just crazy instead of a woman of the wrong time. Always attractive to theatres, Williams does succeed in cutting the number of characters (including the two children), but it is impossible to read both this and SUMMER AND SMOKE and not bemoan the drastic reduction in quality.

duffypratt's review against another edition

3.0

It's a rewrite of Summer and Smoke, and not as good. I found the play enjoyable to read, and thought the characters were interesting reworking of Williams' stock characters. There is also something nice in the idea of a broken, but enduring hope that remains. But it lacks some of the tension and energy and tension of his earlier plays. I'm happy I read it, and I keep coming back to Williams after fairly long breaks. Eventually I will get through my second volume (Library of America) of his complete plays. But if the downward trend of his work continues, it might be a bit of a slog. I'm in no hurry, and I still haven't been sorry for having read one of his plays.

ickesea's review against another edition

2.0

As a separate entity, it is a portrait of hysteria and unrequited love. Alma is obsessive and eccentric (as Tennessee tells us over and over) but by then end, she seems like a completely different person who has given up on all the things that mattered to here at the start of the play. Obviously we don’t know what happened between her and John in the space between the end and the epilogue, but it clearly wasn’t to her liking. I think because Tennessee Williams is so successful at evolving multiple characters over the course of ~120 pages, for there to be only one character that’s really worked on feels like a let down.

Compared to Summer and Smoke, this play was very bland. I’m not sure why Tennessee prefers this to his original version.