Sebastian Venable was a dilettante, a poet from a privileged New Orleans family who wrote just one poem a year, which he “printed himself on an eighteenth-century hand-press at his atelier in the French Quarter,” in the words of his adoring mother Violet. He professed no desire for fame in his lifetime; his mother was supposed to attend to that after his death.
But then he died, and it isn’t the kind of death his dear mother could countenance. She insists Sebastian was chaste — yet Sebastian’s young cousin is telling the dreadful story that he was brutally attacked in the street by the desperately hungry street urchins he’d been sexually exploiting. For a dilettante whose mother insists his life was his work, what happens when that life is revealed as tawdry in its ludicrously ugly end?
That’s the question at the heart of “Suddenly Last Summer,” Tennessee Williams’ still shocking 1958 play. Audiences have been flabbergasted by the cannibalism, the rapacious sex, the see-through white bathing suit that Sebastian buys his attractive young female cousin in order to lure horny male beachgoers.
Yet the heart of the play is not sex, not really. It’s money — as everything in life is about money.
What will we put up with to get it? What kind of awful compromises will we make? Will Violet Venable be able to bury the truth and bully her relatives and buy off a doctor to cover up the terrible story about her son? Perhaps the most surprising thing about revisiting this play in 2023 is that the frequently downbeat Williams finds a note of optimism. Not everyone is bought off by the Venables’ filthy lucre.
The new production that premiered last night at the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis is riveting, a swift 90-minute showcase of excellent actors tearing into Williams’ glorious dialogue. As Violet Venable, Lisa Tejero is simply remarkable. She finds the coquette in this steely, selfish woman, to the point that Williams’ fans may be reminded of Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie — only to lower the boom when her precious son’s legacy is threatened. She commands the stage, and it’s a huge credit to the much younger Naima Randolph, who plays cousin Catherine, that she holds her own. As their greedy relatives, Rengin Altay and Harrison Farmer are also terrific.
But the actor whose performance I’ll be thinking about in days to come is the only lead character who isn’t given a showy role: Bradley Tejeda as Dr. Curowicz, a.k.a. Dr. Sugar. Violet Venable will never admit the truth, and Catherine will never be able to look away from it, but Dr. Sugar confronts the question we all must face. Do we go along with a lie if it means financial support for our ambitions? Do we give in to the rich people who can ease our way?
Tejeda had starring roles in the past two Tennessee Williams festivals, first as Tom in The Glass Menagerie and, last year, as the comic lover Alvaro in The Rose Tattoo. He was great in both plays, but in this year’s quieter role he is better than ever. He seems to be listening for the first time to the almost impossible tale being told on stage. His curiosity is the audience’s curiosity; his horror, our horror.
And his temptation, too, is our temptation. Sebastian Venable wanted to believe in a cruel god, in a savage universe that sees innocents slaughtered in their first hours of life and the poor suffering — until suddenly the tables are turned. Dr. Sugar’s world, like ours, is not so violent, and his desires, like ours, are not so insidious. He wants money to help people, to advance medicine, maybe even to get married. Is that so wrong? In his troubled, handsome face, we see our compromises — and we root for him not to make them.
Williams was already a major success by the time he wrote "Suddenly Last Summer". All of his best plays, in fact, were already behind him. When we hear about Sebastian’s writer’s block, the notebook that stayed horrifyingly empty while he gave into his baser impulses on a Spanish beach, we might be hearing a story about late-stage Tennessee Williams. But unlike Sebastian Venable, the playwright’s legacy isn’t the life he lived — it’s the marvelous work he produced for decades on end, the same work that continues to fuel this wonderful homegrown festival. One poem a year? Our Tom Williams would never.
"Suddenly Last Summer" is written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Tim Ocel. Presented by the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis through September 17 at COCA (6880 Washington Avenue). Showtimes vary by date, and tickets are $45 to $50.
