The Best Occupation

All this Tennessee Williams drama of late has gotten me thinking.

Bear with me here.

People talk about how great it would have been to live in Paris back in the '20s with so many American ex-pats and a culture of art and literature.

No, it wouldn't, at least not if you were a woman. I wouldn't have wanted to be alive at any time before there was reliable birth control.

Ditto the difficulties of being gay before decriminalization and greater acceptance became the norms.

But without that time, we wouldn't have the tortured plays of Tennessee Williams so we wouldn't be celebrating his centennial and I probably wouldn't have seen my fourth of his works in a month tonight.

Richmond Triangle Players was opening "Suddenly, Last Summer" at their excellent theater in Scott's Addition (best leg room of any theater in town).

I walked into a lively crowd having cocktails and chatter before the show.

Deciding to head into the theater, the usher tried to hand me two programs; I told him I only needed one.

"Well, then shouldn't you be out there mingling?" he said slyly.

Judging by the good-looking and mostly male minglers, I don't think they were interested in my type, I told him.

"You sound like me!" he giggled, leading me to my seat.

I heard my name called and a theater critic friend waved and moved over to say hello.

As curtain time approached, he decided to stay next to me rather than returning to his seat.

Glancing over a few minutes later, he said, "Would you look at that? A cute guy just sat down in the seat next to mine!"

Timing is everything, my friend.

"Suddenly Last Summer," like "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" last week, is basically two monologues, one in each act.

And, like that play, this one had plenty of repressed homosexuality and money-grubbing family members.

I especially liked Jacqueline O'Connor's portrayal of Mrs. Holly; her spot-on look of Southern womanhood, right down to the pale pink gloves, and bewildered but rapt attention to her "daughter's" revelations showed a total engagement in the drama.

Lorri Lindberg playing Violet Venable with the passion of a deluded Southern mother, summed up the secret to survival with, "I have to have my 5:00 cocktail first to fortify me."

But the dialogue is always the high point of any Williams play for me.

"It takes character to refuse to grow old," Violet says about her dead son's lack of aging in photographs.

I had no idea it was as simple as that.

"Strictly speaking, his life was his occupation."

Now that one I had definitely figured out.