Most people asssume Tennessee Willams' master opus to be 'A Streetcar Named Desire', or perhaps even 'The Glass Menagerie'.....But even these masterpieces seem overdone and overbearing when compared to this short, seemingly insignificant little play.

Here's the story: Catherine Holly, a beautiful and outspoken young woman, has been stuck in an insane asylum for the last few months. She has been put in there due to the stories, the awful, violent stories, she forces herself to tell......Stories concerning the death of her cousin, the poet and socialite Sebastian Venable.

She had been vacationing with him on that last summer of his life, and was indeed with him when she died.......But the version of Sebastian's death which she presents is too horrible for those who knew him and loved him, namely his mother, Violet Venable, to accept.

Violet wishes for her niece to stop repaeting these awful stories....She wishes for Catherine to be lobotomized. The play takes place in Violet Venable's house, where Catherine is examined by the young doctor who will decide whether or not she should be operated on or not, and thus we get to hear first hand, her hideous story of what had happened, Suddenly last Summer.

I will not spoil it further.....You simply must read this play. It tackles the subjects of Death, sexuality, mortality, and most importantly, the suffering and the shame that comes with and is the fruit of complete and utter honesty, with such skill....It is amazing, when you think of it, how underrated this play is.


Beautiful, violent, and disturbing   June 9, 1999
 11 out of 12 found this review helpful

This play of Williams' (originally presented with the one-act "Something Unspoken" as "Garden District") pulls together a number of themes that ran through his earlier works -- violence, sexual exploitation, cannibalism, alienation -- and combines them in a work that is both powerful visceral and hypnotically dream-like. The story concerns Catherine Holly and the strange story she has to tell about her cousin Sebastian. Her tale wreaks havoc within her family, particularly with her Aunt Violet, who places the girl in an asylum and wants her subjected to a lobotomy. However, the action of the play is negligible; where Williams places the chills are in the various stories told by all the characters, filling in a portrait of the bizarre, sinister Sebastian Venable. The effect is all the more disturbing for the fact that we see the events in our imaginations rather than onstage. An true original from an American genius.


Unknown binding   February 12, 2000
 2 out of 62 found this review helpful

Loved the movie and wanted to read the book version. Was disappointed when I received the book and it was the "play" version. Buyer beware.


Suddenly, Last Summer   August 15, 2006
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Love the movie and wanted to read the story in the play form. It is a complex story with many twists and turns.
You wonder about the many references to food. " Her eyes are a delicious color" and such.
After reading the play version you can relate to how the movie was embelished upon to make the story even more complex.

Great!


Not my favorite Williams' play   August 16, 2008
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

It's an unusual story, but I don't find it nearly as moving as Streetcar or Night of the Iguana.