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Tennessee Williams review – John Lahr’s ‘compulsively readable’ biography	Tennessee Williams review – John Lahr’s ‘compulsively readable’ biography
2014-10-29 11:00:11 UTC	2014-11-01 03:30:55 UTC (3 days later)
When Tennessee Williams declared “Life is cannibalistic” he was also speaking of art: he had a tendency to equate the two. As John Lahr notes in his mammoth new biography, Williams was “the most autobiographical of American playwrights”, using the raw material of his troubled youth to fuel his art. Like any good cannibal, Williams understood the symbolic power that consuming your enemy confers. Over a remarkable 15 years, Williams wrote 10 plays that transformed US theatre, securing his place in the pantheon with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. It was O’Neill who wrested American drama, kicking and screaming, into the world of realism: so repelled was he by Victorian sentimental romanticism that he ruthlessly eliminated all poetry from his plays. Miller, speaking for America’s political conscience, similarly eschewed romanticism. It took Williams to return romantic melodrama to the stage, embracing emotional excess while elevating it through sheer lyrical force. A Streetcar Named Desire, as Miller himself observed, planted “the flag of beauty on the shores of commercial theatre”.	When Tennessee Williams declared “Life is cannibalistic” he was also speaking of art: he had a tendency to equate the two. As John Lahr notes in his mammoth new biography, Williams was “the most autobiographical of American playwrights”, using the raw material of his troubled youth to fuel his art. Like any good cannibal, Williams understood the symbolic power that consuming your enemy confers. Over a remarkable 15 years, Williams wrote 10 plays that transformed US theatre, securing his place in the pantheon with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. It was O’Neill who wrested American drama, kicking and screaming, into the world of realism: so repelled was he by Victorian sentimental romanticism that he ruthlessly eliminated all poetry from his plays. Miller, speaking for America’s political conscience, similarly eschewed romanticism. It took Williams to return romantic melodrama to the stage, embracing emotional excess while elevating it through sheer lyrical force. A Streetcar Named Desire, as Miller himself observed, planted “the flag of beauty on the shores of commercial theatre”.
When he was 30, Thomas Lanier Williams III changed his name to Tennessee, promising to write plays that were “a picture of my own heart”. His idiom is defiantly symbolic: “symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama”, he insisted. Eventually he would grant Blanche DuBois a vanished home named Belle Rêve, but all his plays concern beautiful dreams. They are also set in the steamy, defeated south, a space at once erotic and repressive, mythic and ordinary, in which reality destroys any possibility of romantic heroism. His characters are victims of circumstance and cultural rigidity, defined by their consoling fictions, the myths that insulate them from brutal realities but cannot save them. That gap between fantasy and reality creates the dramatic space of the play.	When he was 30, Thomas Lanier Williams III changed his name to Tennessee, promising to write plays that were “a picture of my own heart”. His idiom is defiantly symbolic: “symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama”, he insisted. Eventually he would grant Blanche DuBois a vanished home named Belle Rêve, but all his plays concern beautiful dreams. They are also set in the steamy, defeated south, a space at once erotic and repressive, mythic and ordinary, in which reality destroys any possibility of romantic heroism. His characters are victims of circumstance and cultural rigidity, defined by their consoling fictions, the myths that insulate them from brutal realities but cannot save them. That gap between fantasy and reality creates the dramatic space of the play.
From the triumph of The Glass Menagerie, which received 24 curtain calls on opening night in 1945, to The Night of the Iguana in 1961, Williams invented a new kind of dramaturgy: the exterior staging of objective experiences was transfigured into an expression of interiority through performance. His sensitivity to emotional ambience helped him fashion what he termed “plastic theatre”: theatre as a unified system fusing language, staging, music and casting into a whole gestalt. His plastic theatre mingled expressionistic memory and fantasy, Chekhov’s psychology, Ibsen’s social realism, O’Neill’s mythic imagination, Faulkner’s history-stunned south and Williams’s own symbolic imagination. With a bit of gothic melodrama thrown in for fun, his productions sharply diverged from mainstream theatre’s conventional, linear narrative. This shift initially discomfited audiences, who found it disjointed and episodic, but that was the point: Streetcar, in particular, stages Blanche’s interior drama, so that the play’s disintegration mirrors her own. Williams’s characters often believe that their fantasies free them from reality, but in truth those fantasies imprison them, usually in madness.	From the triumph of The Glass Menagerie, which received 24 curtain calls on opening night in 1945, to The Night of the Iguana in 1961, Williams invented a new kind of dramaturgy: the exterior staging of objective experiences was transfigured into an expression of interiority through performance. His sensitivity to emotional ambience helped him fashion what he termed “plastic theatre”: theatre as a unified system fusing language, staging, music and casting into a whole gestalt. His plastic theatre mingled expressionistic memory and fantasy, Chekhov’s psychology, Ibsen’s social realism, O’Neill’s mythic imagination, Faulkner’s history-stunned south and Williams’s own symbolic imagination. With a bit of gothic melodrama thrown in for fun, his productions sharply diverged from mainstream theatre’s conventional, linear narrative. This shift initially discomfited audiences, who found it disjointed and episodic, but that was the point: Streetcar, in particular, stages Blanche’s interior drama, so that the play’s disintegration mirrors her own. Williams’s characters often believe that their fantasies free them from reality, but in truth those fantasies imprison them, usually in madness.
Williams also released US theatre from its puritanical straitjacket, liberating it into an erotic space that acknowledged the dark alleys and twisted paths of adult sexuality. For Williams, Eros may save us, or it may savage us. His plays exploded the virgin/whore stereotype; he was the first American playwright to grant women erotic sensibilities (The Rose Tattoo can claim to be the first US play to celebrate female sexuality) and he was the first to eroticise men as sexual objects.	Williams also released US theatre from its puritanical straitjacket, liberating it into an erotic space that acknowledged the dark alleys and twisted paths of adult sexuality. For Williams, Eros may save us, or it may savage us. His plays exploded the virgin/whore stereotype; he was the first American playwright to grant women erotic sensibilities (The Rose Tattoo can claim to be the first US play to celebrate female sexuality) and he was the first to eroticise men as sexual objects.
There is a reason why sexuality and madness are the twin poles around which Williams’s plots orbit, for he was nothing if not preoccupied by his own spectacular drama. His emotional chemistry meant that he constantly converted horror into art. His early years were defined by two psychic traumas: the unbearable tension between the prudish repressiveness of his family and his own homosexuality, and the raging guilt he felt over his mother’s decision to have his younger sister Rose lobotomised. His parents were both pilloried and redeemed in two of his greatest plays: his mother, “Miss Edwina”, became Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, while his bullying, alcoholic father, “CC”, was the model for Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He later returned to his mother with the even more unforgiving Suddenly Last Summer, transfiguring his sister’s tragedy into poetry.	There is a reason why sexuality and madness are the twin poles around which Williams’s plots orbit, for he was nothing if not preoccupied by his own spectacular drama. His emotional chemistry meant that he constantly converted horror into art. His early years were defined by two psychic traumas: the unbearable tension between the prudish repressiveness of his family and his own homosexuality, and the raging guilt he felt over his mother’s decision to have his younger sister Rose lobotomised. His parents were both pilloried and redeemed in two of his greatest plays: his mother, “Miss Edwina”, became Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, while his bullying, alcoholic father, “CC”, was the model for Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He later returned to his mother with the even more unforgiving Suddenly Last Summer, transfiguring his sister’s tragedy into poetry.
Lahr maintains Williams at the centre of his own emotional cosmology, affirming the basic geometry of his family romance, concurring with Williams in blaming his parents for his alcoholism, insecurity and hysterical outbursts. It is unsurprising that in the 1940s and 1950s Williams should interpret his own experiences in Freudian terms, blaming his mother for his problems. It is more surprising that a biographer in 2014 should agree. Williams called his mother “a moderately controlled hysteric”. Lahr adds: “… like many hysterics, she had trouble with her body; she was frigid”. But Williams also referred to Edwina’s “monolithic puritanism”, implying that her fears were those of her culture: Lahr never suggests that she, too, might have been a casualty of her upbringing. He casually refers to the “castrating wilfulness” of one female friend, and tells us that Williams’s “evolution into genital sexuality – so essential for male adulthood – had been woefully postponed”. Even if we accept that genital sexuality is a category distinct from other kinds of sexuality, then presumably it must be essential for female adulthood, too. This may sound like quibbling, but such blinkered Freudian judgmentalism precludes an objective view of Williams’s life. His plays already tender the emotional valences of his world: we need critical neutrality, not a validation of his more overwrought ideas.	Lahr maintains Williams at the centre of his own emotional cosmology, affirming the basic geometry of his family romance, concurring with Williams in blaming his parents for his alcoholism, insecurity and hysterical outbursts. It is unsurprising that in the 1940s and 1950s Williams should interpret his own experiences in Freudian terms, blaming his mother for his problems. It is more surprising that a biographer in 2014 should agree. Williams called his mother “a moderately controlled hysteric”. Lahr adds: “… like many hysterics, she had trouble with her body; she was frigid”. But Williams also referred to Edwina’s “monolithic puritanism”, implying that her fears were those of her culture: Lahr never suggests that she, too, might have been a casualty of her upbringing. He casually refers to the “castrating wilfulness” of one female friend, and tells us that Williams’s “evolution into genital sexuality – so essential for male adulthood – had been woefully postponed”. Even if we accept that genital sexuality is a category distinct from other kinds of sexuality, then presumably it must be essential for female adulthood, too. This may sound like quibbling, but such blinkered Freudian judgmentalism precludes an objective view of Williams’s life. His plays already tender the emotional valences of his world: we need critical neutrality, not a validation of his more overwrought ideas.
Whatever he may have believed, Williams was not merely the pawn of monstrous parents, but he returned obsessively to his own torment, nursing it as the source of his art, a particularly self-defeating brand of magical thinking. This is not to deny the pain of his conflicted desires: Williams did not masturbate until he was 26, Lahr tells us (twice), and after his two first sexual experiences he was so distressed that he vomited. Once Williams finally accepted his own homosexuality (a struggle that Lahr only gestures towards), he would forever associate sex with liberation.	Whatever he may have believed, Williams was not merely the pawn of monstrous parents, but he returned obsessively to his own torment, nursing it as the source of his art, a particularly self-defeating brand of magical thinking. This is not to deny the pain of his conflicted desires: Williams did not masturbate until he was 26, Lahr tells us (twice), and after his two first sexual experiences he was so distressed that he vomited. Once Williams finally accepted his own homosexuality (a struggle that Lahr only gestures towards), he would forever associate sex with liberation.
Lahr’s book was conceived as a sequel to Lyle Leverich’s 1995 Tom, a biography of Williams’s early years that ends in 1944. Lahr starts in 1945, with The Glass Menagerie, but never fully explains Williams’s childhood. Gaps and repetitions ensue, along with confusing sequences that tell us of Williams’s emotional reactions to events we haven’t yet encountered. The story of Rose’s lobotomy, so central to Williams’s emotional life, and thus to his art, is related in a piecemeal way that will surely confuse readers unfamiliar with it. Williams’s own serious nervous breakdown at the age of 24 is dispensed with in a sentence. Anecdotes repeated in close proximity betray the book’s 12‑year gestation, its mutation from a sequel to a “stand-alone biography” that doesn’t always stand alone.	Lahr’s book was conceived as a sequel to Lyle Leverich’s 1995 Tom, a biography of Williams’s early years that ends in 1944. Lahr starts in 1945, with The Glass Menagerie, but never fully explains Williams’s childhood. Gaps and repetitions ensue, along with confusing sequences that tell us of Williams’s emotional reactions to events we haven’t yet encountered. The story of Rose’s lobotomy, so central to Williams’s emotional life, and thus to his art, is related in a piecemeal way that will surely confuse readers unfamiliar with it. Williams’s own serious nervous breakdown at the age of 24 is dispensed with in a sentence. Anecdotes repeated in close proximity betray the book’s 12‑year gestation, its mutation from a sequel to a “stand-alone biography” that doesn’t always stand alone.
These are the book’s weaknesses; its strengths are redemptive, and stem from Lahr’s years of work as a theatre critic. It is compulsively readable, thoroughly researched and exemplary when it comes to the productions. Lahr is especially good on Williams’s long-term collaborations with director Elia Kazan and agent Audrey Wood, who together ensured that the finest actors of a generation – Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach – brought Williams’s plays to life. Lahr declares Kazan’s partnership with Williams “the most influential in 20th‑century American theatre”, and it is hard to disagree. Kazan “rallied him out of his writing blocks, challenged his melodramatic excesses, chivied him to work for greater depth, and allowed his imagination to soar”.	These are the book’s weaknesses; its strengths are redemptive, and stem from Lahr’s years of work as a theatre critic. It is compulsively readable, thoroughly researched and exemplary when it comes to the productions. Lahr is especially good on Williams’s long-term collaborations with director Elia Kazan and agent Audrey Wood, who together ensured that the finest actors of a generation – Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach – brought Williams’s plays to life. Lahr declares Kazan’s partnership with Williams “the most influential in 20th‑century American theatre”, and it is hard to disagree. Kazan “rallied him out of his writing blocks, challenged his melodramatic excesses, chivied him to work for greater depth, and allowed his imagination to soar”.
We meet Williams’s several long-term boyfriends, most of whom seem even more temperamental than he, with the notable exception of Frank Merlo, who sustained Williams for more than a decade before dying suddenly of lung cancer at 40. Unable to bear the end, Williams left his devoted lover to die alone. There are memorable sketches of classic stars: Brando appears, “a beautiful, brooding specimen: mercurial, rebellious, and rampant”, and fixes Williams’s plumbing before reading for the part of Stanley Kowalski. Laurette Taylor shows up drunk for the opening night of Menagerie, vomiting into a bucket between scenes; Bette Davis and Tallulah Bankhead pop up playing raddled divas whose behaviour is worse offstage than on.	We meet Williams’s several long-term boyfriends, most of whom seem even more temperamental than he, with the notable exception of Frank Merlo, who sustained Williams for more than a decade before dying suddenly of lung cancer at 40. Unable to bear the end, Williams left his devoted lover to die alone. There are memorable sketches of classic stars: Brando appears, “a beautiful, brooding specimen: mercurial, rebellious, and rampant”, and fixes Williams’s plumbing before reading for the part of Stanley Kowalski. Laurette Taylor shows up drunk for the opening night of Menagerie, vomiting into a bucket between scenes; Bette Davis and Tallulah Bankhead pop up playing raddled divas whose behaviour is worse offstage than on.
Ultimately, Williams suffered the fate of many reformers: the price of his success was rendering his vision obsolete, as America embraced the sexual liberation he had advocated. He endured for a further 22 years, doggedly writing while his audience evaporated. “I’ve gone from good reviews, to bad reviews, to no reviews,” he quipped. Without art and admiration to sustain him, he was “fading like a photograph”. Lahr doesn’t shrink from his subject’s narcissism, his capacity to be ungenerous, capricious, unjust. Williams’s drinking, which tended toward the diluvian, didn’t help, nor did his later addiction to pills. By the end he was a “sodden relic”, as one embittered ex‑colleague described him. “He was not a very good person, really,” said another. “He became very much the monster of the theatre.”	Ultimately, Williams suffered the fate of many reformers: the price of his success was rendering his vision obsolete, as America embraced the sexual liberation he had advocated. He endured for a further 22 years, doggedly writing while his audience evaporated. “I’ve gone from good reviews, to bad reviews, to no reviews,” he quipped. Without art and admiration to sustain him, he was “fading like a photograph”. Lahr doesn’t shrink from his subject’s narcissism, his capacity to be ungenerous, capricious, unjust. Williams’s drinking, which tended toward the diluvian, didn’t help, nor did his later addiction to pills. By the end he was a “sodden relic”, as one embittered ex‑colleague described him. “He was not a very good person, really,” said another. “He became very much the monster of the theatre.”
Williams died alone in a hotel room in 1983, aged 71, of a drug overdose that Lahr strongly hints was deliberate, filled with despair at the loss of his art. He left instructions that he be buried at sea; his estranged brother returned his body instead to St Louis, the childhood home Williams loathed, to bury him next to the parents he had struggled so hard to escape. It was as bitter an end to a romantic dream as any Williams himself had imagined.	Williams died alone in a hotel room in 1983, aged 71, of a drug overdose that Lahr strongly hints was deliberate, filled with despair at the loss of his art. He left instructions that he be buried at sea; his estranged brother returned his body instead to St Louis, the childhood home Williams loathed, to bury him next to the parents he had struggled so hard to escape. It was as bitter an end to a romantic dream as any Williams himself had imagined.
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