The play explores the fascinating world of American playwright Tennessee Williams. Based in part on his memoirs, the play connects the writer's life with the plays and the marvellous creations that people them. The background is the sultry atmosphere of 1940s New Orleans. "The remarkable aspect of Tennessee Williams", said the playwright Robert Anderson, "is how he transmuted his anguished life into great plays." Drugs, alcohol, mental instability and a need for casual sexual encounters all played a part in this anguish. The Kindness of Strangers is about the links between the man and his creations; about how autobiography becomes transformed into art. The stage is peopled with characters both real and fictional, well-known and unknown. - " My little company of the faded and frightened, the difficult, the odd and the lonely" as he called them. And they are presented against the background of a writer trying to make sense of his own existence. Despite feelings of loneliness and terror only just this side of despair, Tennessee Williams still managed to call his life 'remarkably fortunate'. And this is the clue to both the writer and his dramatic creations - they are survivors against the odds who manage to retain an essential humanity as well as a kind of hectic courage.| 30 Jul 02 to 18 Aug 02 | Greenwich Playhouse Outer London, Greater London Performance Details => Venue archive |
