WhatsOnStage.com – Michael Coveney
With The Glass Menagerie continuing in the West End and The Rose Tattoo about to open at the National, London?s informal Tennessee Williams festival takes an intriguing diversion into unknown territory with this short trilogy of ?lost? playlets in the smaller of the Trafalgar Studios.
The Williams canon of great work is by no means decided ? how surprising a discovery was Summer and Smoke last year? ? and the most substantial item on this bill ? And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens, despite its arch reference to Shakespeare?s Richard II – is an extraordinary sketch, dating from the late 1950s. Suppressed in his lifetime by the playwright himself, it is about a transvestite in the French Quarter of New Orleans trying to seduce a ?straight? pick-up by getting him drunk.
The transvestite, Candy, hires herself out as Karl?s prostitute for the night having mixed him the lethal ?violet? (about a gallon each of vodka and Pernod). Some months later, the couple are domiciled, but Karl beats up his host(ess) and absconds with the money in her silver teapot. Candy is comforted by her neighbours, a pair of nosy queens from Alabama.