Broadway Theatre Archive Tennessee Williams Collection (1966)

Eccentricities of a Nightingale
Tony Award-winning actress, Blythe Danner, portrays the sensitive spinster Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams' 1948 drama. Frustrated with longing for the socially prominent young doctor next door, the eccentric, highly emotional minister's daughter decides to settle for one night with him in a rented hotel room. The Washington Post wrote: "Blythe Danner's Alma is as much of a television event as Katharine Hepburn's Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. Frank Langella is such a warm, dreamy-eyed Dr. Buchanan that the role is reimbursed for the loss of its cynical edge with a smooth romanticism that complements Danner's determined honesty splendidly." "How many different emotions do you expect in two hours?" --The New York Daily News. With Tim O'Connor, Louise Latham, and Neva Patterson.

Ten Blocks on the Camino Real
Martin Sheen stars as the eternal American G.I. Kilroy, a poetic soul condemned to spiritual death, in Tennessee Williams's allegorical one-act play. In a dreamlike fictitious Latin American country, a worn-out Casanova, a Camille living on memories, a Byron pitiful in his disillusioned pride, and others less famous live out a hopeless existence. Into this world comes Kilroy, an ex-boxer and perpetual fall guy, who asks so little and always gets short-changed, but never gives up hope. He is finally conned, or almost, into despairing subjection like the rest. "An allegory about people removed from time and geography..." --The New York Times. With Lotte Lenya, Tom Aldredge, Michael Baseleon, and Albert Dekker.

Dragon Country
This production pairs together two Tennessee Williams plays, written twenty years apart, each examining the theme of isolation with searing clarity. The joint presentation features the world premiere of "I Can't Imagine Tomorrow," starring two-time Oscar nominee Kim Stanley (The Right Stuff) and William Redfield (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), and a much earlier work, "Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen," starring Lois Smith (Five Easy Pieces)and Alan Mixon. Together, the dramas delve into "A land of endured but unendurable pain," said Williams, "where each one is so absorbed, deafened, blinded by his own journey across it, he sees, he looks for, no one else crawling across it with him."

Tennessee Williams TV Productions

This was an Amazon.com special deal, with three television productions of Tennessee Williams's plays: "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real" (a very early PBS production, in black-and-white, from the mid-1960s); "Dragon Country" (two one-acts, done on PBS in 1970); "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale" (a "Great Performances" production from 1976). Quite frankly, the technical aspects of the DVDs are only fair, they have not been "boosted" and show the broadcast standards of television in other periods (1960s-1970s); nevertheless, these are exceptional productions, with superb acting, and the great writing of one of America's premiere playwrights. A young Martin Sheen is an amazingly callow and touching Kilroy in "Camino Real", confronted with an array of characters including Lotte Lenya, Carrie Nye, Hurd Hatfield, Albert Dekker, Janet Margolin... one of Williams's most imaginative plays, and it gets a classic treatment. "Dragon Country" has Lois Smith, Alan Mixon, the legendary Kim Stanley and William Redfield giving touching performances in two short plays about people trying to connect but lost in their own dreamworlds (almost archetypal performances from Smith and Stanley). The finest production is the last: "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" is Williams's reworking of his "Summer and Smoke", and it features Blythe Danner and Frank Langella at their very best. In Danner's case, it is a bold performance, because she is not afraid of the character's silliness, the off-putting affectations, and she makes you see the wrenching sadness and loneliness under the nervous gestures. This was definitely a bargain, and i can hardly wait for the upcoming boxset of Tennessee Williams films (including "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Sweet Bird of Youth", "Baby Doll" and "Night of the Iguana") which will be released by Warner Home Video. February 24, 2006

Two great & one so-so Tennessee Williams play

If you're a fan of Tennessee Williams this triptych is a great bargain. The strongest of the three is "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" (a reworking of "Summer and Smoke" and one which Williams preferred to his earlier effort). Danner and Langella are brilliant. The sexual frankness these two characters exhibit may seem implausible for their social setting and the era being depicted, but somehow it works. It's as if Williams is presenting us with a hypothetical: "What if people could be honest with one another about their sexual desires and what if they were willing to engage one another in fulfilling these desires without burdening each other with unrealistic expectations?" Watching Danner's Alma is like seeing what might have become of Blanche DuBois if she had not lost her connection to reality and if Stanley had loved her and not just used her. "Dragon Country" is two short plays about conflicted couples. The DVD is worth the purchase price just for Kim Stanley's subtle performance in part 2, "I Can't Imagine Tomorrow." It's easy to see why she was such a major stage actor; it's a pity she didn't make more films. The only disappointment in this set was "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real," which feels like an amateurish high school production. The story is told on a mythic level which makes it difficult to take any of the characters seriously--in trying to present them archetypes Williams has created wooden stereotypes. This one will probably be of interest only to the person intent upon seeing everything Williams wrote. Even so, the cost of the set is less than buynig any two of the DVDs separately. January 12, 2003

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