UCONN'S CRT PRODUCES RARE TENNESSEE PLAY

The Connecticut Repertory Theatre took on the challenging short story by Tennessee Williams this past weekend, “And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens.” Written in 1957 at the peak of Tennessee Williams’s fame, it was not published until long after his death and never staged in his lifetime. It is a neglected play about what we think we want and need, even if we are deluded in the process by our choices. The play focuses on a successful interior decorator, Candy, who is approaching a thirty-fifth birthday with reluctance. Caught in the persona of a faded Southern belle, in an unaccepting world, living lavishly in the new Orleans’s French Quarter, Candy has been abandoned in her Japanese themed apartment after a seventeen year relationship, with Sidney, has abruptly ended. In a gay bar, she meets Karl, a sailor, and invites him home with her. Her loneliness and need for companionship makes her ignore his suspicious nature and dangerous manner. She uses her money to buy his favor and wants to be seduced. Dangling dollars, credit cards and women, she lures Karl to stay but he finds her unnatural and leaves. Candy turns to her tenants upstairs, Jerry and Alvin, two queens, to rescue and comfort her in her time of need. This production was zoomed during the weekend of April 22-25, with Dexter Singleton as director. An undertone of violence and desperation swirl throughout the story and color every one of the play’s forty-five minute production.