The Gentleman Caller

2011/2012 Season

The Gentleman Caller
By James Cunningham and Martin Hunter

Produced by Zadkiel Productions and Hart House Theatre

Oct 19 - 22, 2011

Tennessee Williams’ meteoric rise began in 1945 with The Glass Menagerie and for fifteen years he produced a string of hits that established him as the foremost American playwright. Then the tide turned as the critics condemned his late plays in scathing terms. Williams descended into a spiraling haze of alcohol, drugs and promiscuity. This play begins with the 72 year-old Williams encountering a handsome young stranger who breaks into his apartment and catalyses something in Williams, causing him to revisit his past.

One week run
Wed to Sat 8pm

Tickets: Adults $35
Students & Seniors $18

BUY TICKETS
www.uofttix.ca
416.978.8849

Hart House Theatre
Wed, 2011-10-19 20:00 - Sat, 2011-10-22 22:00

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

Perhaps humans need to rewrite their own narrative endlessly to make sense of their impending death. As we approach "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns" do we relentlessly pen new drafts to make sense of the upcoming question mark? I imagine that a writer of such extraordinary imaginative genius as Tennessee Williams would have kept red-lining and revamping with vigor right till the bitter end.

Williams died alone in a NYC hotel of a likely barbiturate overdose. There was a murine bottle cap in his mouth. As his physical self was shutting down, what was happening inside that crackerjack brain of his? With The Gentleman Caller, Martin Hunter and James Cunningham give us an opportunity to investigate exactly that question.

We have chosen to take the text and investigate it as if it were part memory play, part dream play and part hallucination. Hopefully we get a gimpse of the ghosts that populated Tom Williams' fragile psyche, and who drove him to tell the fabulous stories he told.

- David Ferry

PLAYWRIGHT'S NOTES:

Theatre is a beguiling temptress, as anyone who has pursued her will know. She can bring sudden acclaim, then turn on a dime and heap you with ignominy and insult. Even the most talented writers have experienced this. Tennessee Williams was no exception. Yet he kept on going, writing and rewriting to the very end. The script for yet another play was found in his typewriter when his body was discovered in his room at the Elysee Hotel in Manhattan on the morning of February 25, 1983. He lived up to his motto: En Avant.