The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays [Paperback]

Here are portraits of American life during the Great Depression and after, populated by a hopelessly hopeful chorus girl, a munitions manufacturer ensnared in a love triangle, a rural family that deals justice on its children, an overconfident mob dandy, a poor couple who quarrel to vanquish despair, a young spinster enthralled by the impulse of rebellion, and, in The Magic Tower, a passionate artist and his wife whose youth and optimism are not enough to protect their dream marriage. This new volume gathers some of Williamss most exuberant early work and includes one-acts that he would later expand to powerful full-length dramas: The Pretty Trap, a cheerful take onWithin his early one-acts there are intriguing prototypes of charactersand seeds of ideas Williams developed more fully in his later, largerdramas.Williams was always confronting the future; a shaman with a typewriter, he dug into the darkest depths of the American psyche in search of dramatic truths.Just as young painters make their stabs at impressionism and cubism, inhis early one-acts Williams tried his hand with political satire, expressionism, social realism, and even drawing-room comedy.The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays. Some of which are like firecrackers in a rope.Reading these plays of the very young Tennessee, then of the successful Tennessee Williams, and finally of the troubled man of the 1970s he had become, we are offered a panoramic yet detailed view of the themes, the demons, and the wit of this iconic playwright.A wonderful collection of never-before-collectedone-acts: The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays. Some of which are like firecrackers in arope (Tennessee Williams).