A previously unpublished radio play written by Tennessee Williams as a college student has been published in The Strand magazine. What does the work say about the playwright before he became famous?
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Tennessee Williams is one of America’s great playwrights and screenwriters. But before he wrote masterpieces like “The Glass Menagerie” and “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Williams wrote radio plays. One of them was a supernatural thriller called “The Strangers.” He wrote it when he was in college in the 1930s.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The script survived but it was never published, until now. It appears in the latest issue of The Strand Mystery Magazine. And here’s an excerpt read by some of our MORNING EDITION colleagues.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) What are the strangers, Mr. Brighton (ph)?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Leslie) That I can’t say exactly. We members of the human species are equipped with only five senses, or six at the very most. The strangers are creatures that might be perceptible to us if we had seven or eight or maybe nine senses. But as it is, they exist just outside our little sphere of contact with reality. And so what we know of them is very, very slight.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Leslie (ph), I do wish you’d stop it. You make it sound so horribly plausible that sometimes I find myself believing you in spite of myself.
MARTIN: In the play, three friends visit an old house on a rocky cliff that appears to be haunted by otherworldly beings. Andrew Gulli is the managing editor of the Strand magazine. He says the play demonstrates Williams’ budding talent, like his ability to make the setting feel like a character.
ANDREW GULLI: You feel this claustrophobia. You feel how the space that the people are in has them mentally on edge.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) It’s pitch-black, except that lighthouse beam. It throws such queer shadows, like things crawling around on the floor.
FADEL: The play ends with questions left unanswered, which Gulli says became a signature of Williams’ later works.
GULLI: Whatever he wrote always would have two questions. Could this be real? Could this be imagined? And to me, that’s a great strength in a writer, creating doubt long after the final page is turned.
MARTIN: What is not in doubt is that the works of Tennessee Williams continue to captivate audiences. You can read “The Strangers” in the latest issue of the Strand.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHIL COOK’S “BROTHERS”)
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