Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1976)

Blythe Danner gives a luminous performance in this Tennessee Williams classic. Eccentricities of a Nightingale has an interesting history: it is actually a rethinking of Williams's own play Summer and Smoke (viewers familiar with that work will notice that the setting and character names are the same). Williams preferred Nightingale, and it is easy to see why--the play is at once gentler and more direct than the other. Danner plays Alma, a typical Tennessee Williams heroine, too delicate for this world. Alma is shy and mannered, with an artistic temperament that her joyless father does his best to suppress. She is in love with the boy across the street, the dashing John, but of course in Williams's plays these things are never easy. Danner does a brilliant job of being true to Alma's fragility while still keeping her likable, and Frank Langella endows John with such a warm heart that it's hard to blame him for anything that happens. This excellent production is a pleasure to watch, and Williams's grace of language gives it a crystalline beauty in spite of its shocking ending. --Ali Davis Amazon.com

My Favorite Williams Play

Tennessee Williams often said that the character of Miss Alma in this version of his play was his favorite. Williams usually used his outstanding heroines as his writers voice and this is his most magnificent effort in my opinion. It is not marred by the melodrama of other works or the sheer tawdriness (exploited by film makers) often associated with his 1950's productions.

I wanted to address this to the reviewers here who thought this piece was somehow dated. It isn't. This is a play about artists, nonconformists and freaks. It's about those of us who don't fit in- who are on the left hand path.

It is about love both real and conventional and how it usually alludes us outsiders and maybe everyone- indeed the play seems to hold marriage in utter contempt- an institution for petty minds!

The reason this production is superior to Summer and Smoke (which I also love the film version of- especially for the performances) is it's tenderness toward it's heroine. S&S looks down on Miss Alma. Eccentricities understands her and loves her. S&S is somewhat misogynist, this one is not at all.

The ending reminds me of the ending of the classic film Children of Paradise (another great film) where it no longer seems to matter if the leads live happily ever after. The victory in both is that they honestly loved in the first place and in both, the storytellers decide to be kind- to be generous- and let our star crossed lovers have one magic night to remember always.

A gift to Miss Alma from someone who understood what it was like to be different. August 20, 2008

Never received item.

I never received this, and believe it was shipped to my old address. Nor have I been informed that a refund was issued. Lloyd Hereman August 23, 2007

delicate flower, thorny plot

A prim and proper delicate flower maid, obsessed with affection for the young handsome Doctor, tries to land him in the matrimony net, but alas the harder she tries the more she fails.Well how about a one night stand ? Well he thinks," not a good idea ". Well many moon-years later in the same park, on the same nght (the 4th of July) the young maid (not too young any more) makes contact with a younger hombre and away they go. "If at first you don't succeed, try try, again ? For a Broadway Archive production, not an orchestra seat performance, but O.K for the balcony ? May 23, 2007

"I may be eccentric but not so eccentric I do not have the need for ordinary human love."

Written in 1964, Eccentricities of a Nightingale, like several other Tennessee Williams plays, focuses on a neurasthenic young woman for whom time has stood still. Unmarried, Alma Winemiller fails to belong to the local society of Glorious Hill. Though she is a singer and teaches music, her exaggerated gestures and her personal tics make her an object of pity and even mockery within the town, and her minister father often reprimands her for her peculiarities, which he believes reflect badly upon his position. Her mother, mentally ill, is hidden upstairs, and Alma and her father fear Alma may have inherited her mother's illness.

Alma has always been in love with young John Buchanan, physician son of the Winemillers' family doctor, who lives across the street. On one of his rare visits to Glorious Hill, Alma, in desperation (and suffering from a panic attack), pounds on his door late at night for help. Buchanan, feeling sorry for her, calms her down and eventually invites her to a movie. Alma is so anxious to experience love that she arranges for them to go to a hotel, where rooms can be rented by the hour, afterward.

The play is stunning in its focus on character, and Blythe Danner as Alma is as flighty, nervous, and apologetic as Williams obviously intended. Frank Langella, as Dr. Buchanan, is surprisingly tender here, much more so than one would expect from reading the play. He appears genuinely to care for her and to want to make her happy, and is honest in telling her that he does not love her. Louise Latham as Mrs. Winemiller has a field day playing a crazed woman, and does so with panache, and Neva Patterson, as the overbearing Mrs. Buchanan, is the consummately controlling Southern mother, trying to manage her son's life. The effectiveness of the play depends on the dynamics among the various characters and how much they are unique individuals as opposed to southern stereotypes.

Exquisitely acted, the play is fascinating, but dated. Alma is so whiny and self-conscious that it is difficult to identify with her for the entire play, though her attempt to seduce Dr. Buchanan is both brave and pathetic. The passage of forty years since the play was written, however, has turned it into a relic of the past, rather than a vital and modern experience illustrating universal truths. The lives of these women, most of whom never dreamed of independence, are more pathetic than appealing to a modern audience. n Mary Whipple
September 30, 2006

Excellent production of a rare Williams play

Outstanding performance by a luminous Blythe Danner and a wonderfully underplayed Frank Langella. We enjoyed this much more than "Summer and Smoke". September 26, 2005

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