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IN THE ALBERT
“More than any other work I have
done, this play has seemed to me like
a construction of another world,
a separate existence.”
—Tennessee Williams
events that could occur in the real world,
and their characters confront their problems
in psychologically realistic ways. Yet,
even in these works, Williams’ language
is languidly poetic, and his stage directions
often indicate that he envisioned his
works being performed with an undercurrent
of visual and auditory metaphors. In
A Streetcar Named Desire, for example,
Williams indicates that Blanche’s descent
into madness is underscored by echoing
voices and “jungle noises.” If, in the text
of Streetcar, Williams is holding a mirror
up to life, it is a warped mirror, each distortion
meticulously sculpted. The poetic
elements in these works afford readers a
glimpse of his wide-ranging sensibilities.
But in order to fully appreciate the vastness
of Williams’ dramatic imagination,
one has to experience his more overtly
surrealistic works like Camino Real, The
Gnädiges Fräulein or Stairs to the Roof .
In The Gnädiges Fräulein, a pair of southern
ladies chatter and preen in rocking
chairs while being entertained by a retired
vaudeville performer who has had her
eyes pecked out by an oversized bird. In
Stairs to the Roof, the characters go on a
whirlwind surreal journey before ascending
symbolic stairs to the roof of an office.
Here, the mirror Williams uses is straight
out of a fun house—and like those twisted
images that confront us at carnivals,
they provide a different, but equally valid,
way of perceiving and making sense of
the world.
The phrase “camino real” translates from
Spanish as “royal road,” but in Williams’
play it ironically represents a dead end.
Camino Real places familiar characters
from literature—such as Don Quixote,
Casanova and Lord Byron—in a mythical
town in an unspecified Latin American
country where the “spring of humanity
has gone dry.” Although the play contains
references that place it in the twentieth
century—an airplane, for example—the
play’s time period remains fluid and
ambiguous. The presence of literary
characters from different eras reinforces
the notion that the action occurs either in
many time periods simultaneously, or in
no time period in particular. These literary
characters are joined by characters
who are products of Williams’ imagination,
such as an enigmatic gypsy and a
freaky faction of “streetcleaners” whose
job is to remove corpses from the streets.
Much of the action centers around Kilroy,
a newly arrived American whose name is
inspired by the popular World War II era
graffiti phrase “Kilroy was here.” A prizefighter
with a “heart as big as a baby’s
head,” Kilroy first appears to be the all-
American hero—but the nightmare dreamscape
in which he now finds himself
proves more treacherous than any fighting
ring. While Kilroy and his fellow inhabitants
of the town are theoretically free to
leave, outgoing transportation is sporadic
and a vast desert wasteland stretches to
the horizon—so setting out on foot seems
foolhardy. Most of the characters remain
stuck in their current situations, both
geographically and emotionally, allowing
Williams to explore the inner workings of
their desperation, and their love for (or
perhaps just attachment to) each other.
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