About the work
Suddenly Last Summer is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams that premiered on 7 January 1958 at the off-Broadway York Playhouse in New York, paired with Williams's one-act Something Unspoken under the joint title Garden District. It was directed by Herbert Machiz, with Anne Meacham as Catharine.
Plot
Wealthy widow Violet Venable is mourning her son Sebastian, who died under mysterious circumstances while travelling through Europe. As the account given by her niece Catharine, who had accompanied Sebastian on that last trip, begins to tarnish his spotless reputation, Violet pressures a young surgeon, Dr Cukrowicz, into performing a lobotomy on Catharine, offering to fund his research in return.
Cultural significance
One of Williams's more controversial works, it was filmed in 1959 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. More obliquely than in his other plays, it deals with homosexuality, family control and the violence of coercive psychiatric treatment.