Not About Nightingales [Paperback]

Tennessee Williams (Author), Allean Hale (Editor), Vanessa Redgrave (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1998

early (1938) play, foreword Vanessa Redgrave

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Written in 1938 when Williams was 27, still living at home and a good six years away from Broadway, Not about Nightingales is as much writing exercise as fully realized drama. It lacks the originality and depth of The Glass Menagerie, written only a few years later, and his later masterworks. Nevertheless, it is of considerable interest, not least because it was inspired by a real occurrence in which several unruly prisoners were cooked alive as punishment. And after all, it is Williams' first full-length play and first play written under the pen name Tennessee, and it sufficiently impressed Elia Kazan of the Group Theater, to which Williams sent it in response to a playwriting contest, that he introduced Williams to the New York agent Audrey Wood, who would make his career. Reading the play, most of which is in the thuddingly obvious politically conscious style of Depression-era theater, one notices in brief, brilliant passages and in the intensity of his characters the Williams to come. And that makes it worthwhile. Jack Helbig

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing (June 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213803
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213806
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #551,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of the 20th century's most superb writers, was also one of its most successful and prolific. His classic works include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, Camino Real, Sweet Bird of Youth, Night of the Iguana, Orpheus Descending, and The Rose Tattoo.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A harsh, early play by Tennessee Williams that succeeds, July 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Not About Nightingales (Paperback)

This is a brutal, but interesting and rewarding addition to the work of Tennessee Williams. A terrifying early play about social injustice, it is stylistically different from the poetic works that made Williams America's greatest playwright.

"Nightingales" is a harsh and realistic 1930s drama about inhumane prison conditions. The poetry and vivid characterizations that fuel the masterpieces is absent here, but the humanity remains.

References to Depression America have been left intact, which place the play in a specific time and date it somewhat. One wonders what changes Williams would have made had he returned to this "lost play" later in life. "Nightingales" is most definitely worth reading, after one is saturated with the masterworks.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece in words and action, October 22, 1999

By 

ROCKY VENEGAS ([e-mail]) (Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Not About Nightingales (Paperback)

Torn among O'Neill's rarely seen "The Iceman Cometh" and Miller's haunting "Death of a Salesman", I chose "Not About Nightingales" as the outstanding production on a recent trip to NYC. I was fortunate and honored to have seen this work with Corin Redgrave playing one of the major roles. This is, without a doubt, the best play of the 1998-1999 season on Broadway. It is a wonderful blend of William's poetry and some of the harshest, physical action I have seen on a stage. The entire cast was a joy to watch! Since theater is also literature, I'm positive you will enjoy reading this beautifully rough work by one of America's finest playwrights.

5.0 out of 5 stars Based on a horrific event in our history, 1930s prison hunger strike, October 26, 2010

By 

Rizzo (Nowhere) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Not About Nightingales (Paperback)

Not About Nightingales was written when Tennessee Williams was just 27 years old. It is based on a horrific prison atrocity in the 1930s that occurred in Pensylvania. The play, written in 1938, had been hidden in the archives until Vanessa Redgrave, who was starring in Orpheus Descending read about the play and tracked it down the script. It was first ever performed on the London stage in 1998.

The play is based on a horrific episode in our history in the 1930s, when a number of prisoners in Pennsylvania protested the lack of quality of food and the monotony of the food served. Twenty-five prisoners were taken to the "Klondike" cell where the steam of the radiator reached a heat that basically roasted four men alive. This form of torture was the reaction by the authorities to the protest. The play's main character is the immoral, corrupt and brutal warden.

Williams wrote the play as the expose to the crime. The opening scenes occur in the warden office where a young woman Eva Crane has come applying for a secretarial job. Other scenes shift to the prison cells. It is not easy to read this play, and probably more difficult to see it performed, knowing the history. The setting of the play is a compilation of prisons, and in the dramatic story, the play reflects mostly something like Alcatraz, as we read of the surrounding water.

The play is not overly lengthy, as it reads with 163 pages, but the lines are double spaced. This is an excellent, sad and disturbing read.....Rizzo