Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays (Paperback)
Thirteen previously unpublished short plays now available for the first time.
Tennessee Williams had a distinct talent for writing short plays and, not surprisingly, this remarkable new collection of never-before-published one-acts includes some of his most poignant and hilarious characters: the indefatigable, witty and tough drag queens of And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens...; the strange little man behind the nom de plume Mister Paradise; and the extravagant mistress who cheats on her married man in The Pink Bedroom. Most were written in the 1930s and early 1940s when Williams was already flexing his theatrical imagination. Chosen from over seventy unpublished one-acts, these are some of Williams's finest; several have premiered recently at The Hartford Stage Co., The Kennedy Center, the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. Included in this volume:
- These Are the Stairs You Got to Watch
- Mister Paradise
- The Palooka
- Escape
- Why Do You Smoke So Much, Lily?
- Summer At the Lake
- The Big Game
- The Pink Bedroom
- The Fat Man's Wife
- Thank You, Kind Spirit
- The Municipal Abattoir
- Adam and Eve on a Ferry
- And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens...
Long associated with Williams, acclaimed stage and film actors Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson provide a fresh and challenging foreword for actors, directors, and readers.
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) was America’s most influential playwright. Readers have devoured his poetry, essays, short stories, and letters, as well as his fantastic late plays, his remarkable corpus of one-acts, and his greatest plays—The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Night of the Iguana, The Rose Tattoo, Suddenly Last Summer, and Camino Real. Williams is a cornerstone of New Directions—we publish everything he wrote. He is also our single bestselling author.
"Summer at the Lake" shows the young author contemplating his restlessness and toxic love of his overbearing and manipulative mother.
— John Lahr - The New Yorker
Kudos to Nicholas Rand Moschovakis and David E. Roessel for locating and so ably editing these firecrackers.
— Philip C. Kolin - World Literature Today
The plays have an immediacy and spontaneity that make them akin to snapshots.
— Olivia Jane Smith - Gambit Weekly
Recommended reading.
— Modern Words
— John Lahr - The New Yorker
Kudos to Nicholas Rand Moschovakis and David E. Roessel for locating and so ably editing these firecrackers.
— Philip C. Kolin - World Literature Today
The plays have an immediacy and spontaneity that make them akin to snapshots.
— Olivia Jane Smith - Gambit Weekly
Recommended reading.
— Modern Words