by Tennessee Williams
seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 25 May 2019
Tamara Harvey directs Hattie Morahan as Lady Torrance, the owner of a convenience store in a small Southern town and Seth Numrich as Val Xavier, an attractive drifter who turns up in town and gets a job as the store clerk. Naturally, despite initial wariness on both sides, the two become lovers, a development fraught with danger in the claustrophobic atmosphere surrounding them.
One can expect sensational but initially unrevealed secrets to dominate a Tennessee Williams play, and this one does not disappoint. Town gossips in the form of two inquisitive housewives inform us that Lady is the daughter of an Italian migrant who set up a drinking 'emporium' by the lake during Prohibition years; when he served drink to negroes the local vigilantes burnt the place down and he died trying to save it. Unbeknownst to Lady, Jabe Torrance, the man she married, led the vigilantes. He is now suffering from cancer, returning from a Memphis hospital soon after Val has turned up in the town.
