Summer and Smoke

Summer and Smoke has always been my favorite Williams' play, even though he himself thought it was too melodramatic. The story concerns a woman named Alma Winemiller, an Episcopal minister's daughter in the town of Glorious Hill, Mississippi at the turn of the century. She's been in love with the boy next door since she was a little girl; John Buchanan, Jr. John, Magna Cum Laude from Johns Hopkins, has recently returned from medical school. However, he spends his summer drinking and womanizing as an outlet for his doubts and fears and doesn't want to be a doctor anymore. The course of the play revolves around Alma saving John's body and soul, but in the process of doing so she loses herself. I love this play (as if that means anything to anyone) and it is worth your time in reading it. Enjoy!

Tennessee Williams's SUMMER AND SMOKE meditates on the flesh and the spirit, symbolically exploring their conflict and the role they play in human happiness. We witness here the damaging effect of embracing one at the expense of the other, for in the end we are left with the idea that one must complement the other if our lives are to be fulfilled. The play, like TW's other seminal works, takes place in the American South, a region whose religiosity makes it an especially appropriate setting for a fight between body and soul. Soul is represented by Alma, a preacher's daughter, while the body is represented by John, the son of a doctor and a young physician himself. Despite her Puritanical upbringing, Alma (whose name means "soul")has been attracted to John from the very beginning, when she first made cat eyes on him as a child. But because she supresses her physical attraction to him, she becomes both frigid and hysterical. John, on the other hand, believes all talk of the soul to be so much mumbo jumbo, as he embarks on a life of lechery and debauchery, earning for himself a bad name among the pillars of the community. By the turning point of the play, it's obvious that total preoccupation with the spirit leads to spiritual decay while tending only to sensual desires leaves the body vulnerable to injury and death. Like Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN,SUMMER AND SMOKE reads much like a screen play as numerous sets--a public park, a rectory, a doctor's office, among others--are utilized multiple times during the course of this twelve scene play. The effect would be jarring except that Williams, like Miller, uses lighting to make transitions. The reader will also find that TW uses numerous symbols--a statue, an anatomy chart, etc.--to make his point. And while the ending may stretch beyond believability, it's still a powerful reminder that we should avoid an either/or approach to spirit and body.

This play was originally a failure when it was produced on Broadway. It was not until the 1952 Circle in the Square production directed by Jose Quintero and starring Geraldine Page (who also played the part to perfection in the 1962 film version) that the show became a success. The original production must have been poorly done, because the play is a masterpiece even when one simply reads it. An allegory that takes place in Mississippi during the first decades of this century, the story concerns Alma Winemiller, a proper but slightly affected minister's daughter, and John Buchanan, a young doctor with a penchant for the fast lane. Over the course of the play, the two come to understand each other with more clarity and compassion, until they are each transformed. The character of Alma is said to have been Williams' own favorite. This is Williams on a par with "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire." -- NOTE: This is the acting edition of the play and differs slightly from the reading edition, which includes a deleted prologue showing John and Alma as children.