Reviews for Clothes for a Summer Hotel: A Ghost Play

The average rating for Clothes for a Summer Hotel: A Ghost Play based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-01 00:00:00 Stephen mcguinness Though I haven't done it in a long time, I used to read plays by certain playwrights in bunches. Tennessee Williams is one of my favorites, but I've never read him like that. Perhaps that's for the best, as his perceived excesses may not be conducive to such reading. This is not a play of excess, though it's certainly complex. I heard about this play during a panel at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival a couple of weekends ago and it sounded intriguing. It is more than that -- it is brilliant. The main characters are Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, with appearances from their friends, including Hadley and Ernest Hemingway. Zelda could be seen in the mode of other Williams' creations, such as Blanche DuBois or Amanda Wingfield, but Williams subverts that expectation. Contradictions abound. As with any well-rounded creation, sympathies shift from character to character. Judging from what the panelists on "Writing Tennessee's Story" at the Fest said, the play was ahead of its time -- and it closed in a matter of days. I don't think an audience today would have trouble with the 'ghosts', the shifting time and the layers of meanings, including those about the creator and the created. I could, and probably should, read it again. One of the panelists, 95-year-old poet William Jay Smith -- 7 years younger than Williams, he said that is why he was able to be with us! -- was in a poetry-writing group with Tom (as he called him) back in their St. Louis days, and said this last play of Williams' was "Shakespearean" and "completely misunderstood." Another panelist, the director David Kaplan agreed, calling it "Strindberg-like" with its ghosts walking through walls. He added that it takes twenty years for theatre critics to "catch up" to new modes. About this play, he said the critics "didn't understand it, didn't want to, didn't want others to."

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-14 00:00:00 John Shields Rarely staged, this play is, definitely, one of the best T. William's works. "Zelda at the Oasis", presently running in NYC, is a brilliant re-arrangement of the "Clothes for a summer hotel". Was Zelda really mad or did she just try to escape from "prescribed" reality into sweetness of madness, that became her asylum, the only viable mean of bearing unbearable living in Scott's shadow? These questions keep hunting a reader/a theater-goer long after the play is over, sticking to your mind, disturbing your imagination...