Sunday, January 09, 2022

Play review - "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" by Tennessee Williams (1963)

 Apparently there's several versions of this play - I read the kabuki theatre one. It's enjoyable. There's a rich old woman in a house in Sicily who is visited by a hot stud... who then turns out to be an Angel of Death. There's a witch.

It bogs down with chats between the woman and the stud, a poet... I wish they'd used the witch more or some other character. It could have done with more melodrama. It needs the right treatment. Tab Hunter was in an original version with Tallulah Bankhead - Williams liked Bankhead but felt Hunter, though better than the writer feared, lacked the necessary mystery.

Williams said he never quite got this right and he hasn't in the version I read but it's consistently interesting.

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