Staged reading in New York features professor's book on Tennessee Williams

Al Devlin will be in the audience for the multimedia presentation of Blanche and Beyond, based on Volume II of Williams’ letters.

Professor Al Devlin Justin Kelley photo

Actor Richard Thomas, who played John-Boy in the TV series The Waltons, will portray Tennessee Williams in the staged reading of English Professor Al Devlin's new book, The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume II.

Professor Al Devlin’s most recent book, The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume II, was barely off the press before it started moving toward a stage. The book, which is edited by Devlin and co-editor Nancy Tischler, is scheduled for a staged reading March 21 at the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center in New York. Titled Blanche and Beyond, the reading is part of Writers in Performance, a non-profit literary series of the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Richard Thomas, who played John-Boy in the television series The Waltons, will portray Tennessee Williams. The role is a reprise for Thomas, who played the famous playwright in a multi-city performance tour of Devlin and Tischler’s Volume I. That book also earned a staged reading at the Manhattan Theatre Club, starring Broadway actor Robert Sean Leonard in 2001.

Devlin, who specializes in Southern American literature, says Thomas loves the Williams role and is uniquely suited to it by his versatility as an actor. The performance will include visuals in a multimedia presentation that is an unorthodox mix of writers and actors.

"You listen as though you are hearing a letter," Devlin says. "Tennessee typed 110 words a minute. He worked as a telegrapher in the ’40s and typed the letters quickly. The words came out in poetic patterns. That’s what’s realized in the reading."

Volume II covers Williams’ most productive years, 1945 to 1957, after the staging of the successful The Glass Menagerie and the beginning of the writing of A Streetcar Named Desire, which became an even greater hit. The volume draws to a conclusion with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Devlin worked with 900 letters that fell into the time period and eventually selected 350 that Williams had written to family, friends and peers in the profession, especially director Elia Kazan. The verbally rich letters demonstrate Williams’ ability to shift his tone of voice to fit the correspondent.

Devlin says that Williams, who enrolled as a Mizzou student in 1929, wrote like a "choir boy" to his parents and grandparents. Letters to his agent captured a literary edge, while those to literary and theater people were deferential and conciliatory. In letters to friends and lovers he was outrageous and amusing. The dramatic tension in Volume II rises from the many years that the playwright worked as he strove to create another great script after Streetcar and how he coped with success and failure. Devlin was surprised to find so much evidence of Williams’ durability and endurance emerging through the letters.

"The length of endurance revealed in Volume II is stunning. Williams wrote every day, often with disappointing results," Devlin says. "He needed to be strong to withstand the disappointments of those years."

Williams’ flirtation with self-destruction also is evident in the letters. "He began subjecting his body to repeated toxic abuse. It was a strength to resist that, too," Devlin says. "Writing and staying alive were inseparable for him. He was unsuited for anything other than writing, and he had a tremendous strength when it came to sustaining his art."

Early reviews of Volume II indicate that it will equal or surpass the success of Volume I, which won the Modern Language Association prize for a "distinguished edition of letters." Richard Schickel’s review of Volume II in The New York Times praises the new work and the meticulous annotations of the editors. A Publishers Weekly description of the book calls Devlin and Tischler Williams scholars who "fill in the background details effectively through interstitial notes, producing a life story that gives voice to a great playwright."

Still, some of the highest praise for Volume II comes from a writer who many consider America’s finest living playwright, Edward Albee. Albee writes that Volume II is an "unedited outpouring of Williams’ mind and heart and — perhaps more wonderfully! — the sound of his voice, for he wrote these letters as he spoke, and his inflections, his intonations, are there in full. You cannot read these letters without hearing Tennessee speaking them."

Williams’ lifelong publisher, New Directions, published both volumes of the letters and gave the editors carte blanche. So far, Devlin has spent 10 years doing research for the books. His work was supported by a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as research leave and grants from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Volume II ends with a letter from Williams’ director Elia Kazan that projects Williams beyond 1957, and although Devlin’s not ready to talk about it yet, he says Volume III is inevitable.

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Additional links:

Al Devlin
English Department

Volume I honored by Modern Language Association article

New Directions Publishing
National Endowment for the Humanities
MU Office of Research

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