Tennessee: Lost - and Found - In Texas

Call it buried treasure. For years, lying deep within the vast holdings of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, sitting among the many papers and artifacts like a rare coin under a heap of sand on some out-of-the-way island, was a play by Tennessee Williams, a play that had never been produced. It was an early work, a script that predated his breakthrough drama, The Glass Menagerie, which is perhaps what kept most people from taking it seriously. But then it caught the attention of Vanessa Redgrave, and within a very short time, it became a play that a lot of people took very seriously — and which may shift our perception of the writer who came to pen A Streetcar Named Desire and other great works of the American theatre.

The play is called Not About Nightingales, and it's one that Williams wrote in 1938, when he was still in his twenties and developing his style as a writer. He was more socially oriented then than we think of Williams today, and he was inspired to write the play after reading an account of brutal conditions in a Pennsylvania prison. It's in many ways a stock prison drama, with a vicious warden and cruelly mistreated inmates, but it has some power to its portrayal of its characters and the violence of their lives. Williams submitted it to a new play contest, and it was rejected for production. He set it aside, and Nightingales was never produced. It joined the approximately 1,000 other manuscripts of Williams' acquired by the HRHRC, and took up residence in Austin.

Redgrave paid a visit to Austin and the center when she was in Texas in 1996, presenting Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra as part of an exchange program between the Alley and the Moving Theatre, a company she heads with her brother Corin. Something about the script spoke to Redgrave, and she felt it was worth rescuing from obscurity. She interested her brother and Alley artistic director Gregory Boyd in a joint production of the work. Boyd agreed to the project, and it was decided that the play would be produced with a combination of British and American actors from both companies, first in London, then in Houston. Trevor Nunn was invited to direct the production. He accepted.

On March 5 of this year, at the Cottlesloe Theatre, the world got its first look at Not About Nightingales on the stage. The response was electric. Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard called it "one of the most remarkable theatrical discoveries of the last quarter century." John Gross of The Evening Standard said "the play has a sledgehammer impact," and Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph praised its "extraordinary dramatic force." Much of the acclaim credited Nunn's impressive treatment of the play. "The finished product," wrote Benedict Nightingale (!) in The New York Times, "crackles with dramatic electricity and infectious indignation."

Now, the work is crossing the Big Pond. On June 10, Williams' countrymen get their first look at this "lost" work. Is it a neglected masterpiece? The consensus seems to be, "No." But that doesn't mean it isn't an exciting piece of drama, realized in a riveting production. Or, as David Lister of The Independent says, "A theatrical treasure."

---

Not About Nightingales runs June 10-July 3, Tue-Thu, 7:30pm, Fri, 8pm, Sat, 2:30 & 8pm, Sun, 2:30 & 7:30pm, at the Alley Theatre, 520 Texas Ave., Houston. Tickets are $35-37. Call 713/228-8421 for info.