Summer and Smoke

Play. Tennessee Williams
M8 (young, 30, middle-age) F7 (young, 20s, middle-age). 1 girl 1 boy. A park with fountain, a rectory parlour, an office, an arbour. All sets are skeletal on an open stage.

Alma, a nervous, ardent spinster, falls in love with John, a dissolute medical student. Though they attempt mutually to bridge the gap in their different natures this proves impossible, even though each in a sense converts the other. John marries a different, more earthy, girl; in the final scene Alma returns to the fountain and picks up a travelling salesman.

Summer and Smoke

Drama. Tennessee Williams.
8 men, 6 women. 3 Simple Unit Sets.

The play is a simple love story of a somewhat puritanical Southern girl and an unpuritanical young doctor. Each is basically attracted to the other but because of their divergent attitudes toward life, each over the course of years is driven away from the other. Not until toward the end does the doctor realise that the girl's high idealism is basically right. And while she is still in love with him, it turns out that neither time nor circumstances will allow the two ultimately to come together.

ISBN: 0-8222-1097-5