Description
Tennessee Williams (1930-83) was already a major figure in American theatre when he wrote Suddenly Last Summer (1958), which would be adapted to the screen just one year later by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, from a screenplay by Gore Vidal. The play and the film, the theatre and the cinema, are the focal point of this production by the Ensemble company, as well as of Carlos Pimenta’s staging. “A confrontation between images: the ones of cinema, invariable and forceful, and the ones of the theatre, unstable and svelte.” Who was Sebastian? What happened to him, suddenly last summer? This character, who is absent from the play’s action (but yet omnipresent, like a haunting), develops out of the contradictory views of him that are presented by Mrs. Venable (his mother) and Catharine (his cousin), while Dr. Cukrowicz (and we, the viewers, with him) tries to grasp his essence. The clash between the images imagined by each character is turbocharged by the shadows of memory and the voracity of desire. Out of the remembered light on a beach in the European coast darkness bursts out, accompanied by a question: what is truth, in the end?
Gallery
Credits
by Tennessee Williams conceived and directed by Carlos Pimenta
translated by Ana Luísa Amaral set design Carlos Pimenta, João Pedro Fonseca costumes Bernardo Monteiro lighting design Rui Monteiro staging assistance Filipa Dias
music Ricardo Pinto video João Pedro Fonseca
cast Emília Silvestre, Pedro Mendonça, Bárbara Pais, Clara Nogueira, Catarina Malheiro, Pedro Barros, Marta Bernardes
co-produced by Ensemble – Sociedade de Actores, Teatro Nacional São João
playing time 1:50 Ages 14 and up
Suddenly Last Summer is presented by special arrangement with the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.
English subtitles
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