Nightmare On Stage

Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer depicts Catherine Holly, a poor relation to a prominent New Orleans family, and the family’s matriarch, Violet Venable, as the two wrangle with the truth about the untimely death of Sebastian, Violet’s son and Catherine’s cousin.

As the 1959 film adaptation directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift further illustrated, it’s a brilliantly unsettling thriller strung between sexuality and psychoanalysis.

Its stage and filmic potential will be explored by director Kip Williams in his new production of the play for the Sydney Theatre Company, which will incorporate the use of live video, and a cast which includes (alongside Norville as Catherine) Paula Arundell, Meltia Jurisic, Mark Leonard Winter, Brandon McClelland, Susan Prior, and Robyn Nevin as Violet. Having worked with Williams on Romeo And Juliet last year Norville was given the script by the director and was struck by its tension and discomfort. “It’s probably one of the most insane rides that I’ve read for a really long time. I just thought, ‘This is intimidating and exciting and I need to find some real chutzpah to meet it.’ I was scared mainly, which means that I cared a lot. When I read it I was asking: how is this going to work? How does this horror film, or this thriller/suspense/nightmare function on stage? And I think we’re still asking those questions, and as a performer I don’t think I’ll ever answer them, which is really exciting.”

Norville has been looking outside the text of play for things that conjure similar feelings in order to imbue her performance with that quality, and give the audience a similar sensation. “The only thing that’s helping is filling my brain with everything that isn’t the play – reading poetry and listening to wack music or watching heavy metal concerts… This play makes me feel very skin-crawly, and I hope people leave with a real sense of uncertainty and confusion about morality and a weirdness in themselves. I’ve found that script is just so overwhelming I have to find other ways to fuel myself, so I’ve been searching for things that make me feel that way, and I’ve found that Skrillex does, and Bukowski poetry, where someone is just so trapped and confused and angry.”

Williams’ use of theatrical and filmic mechanics in the play has opened up multiple paths for presenting a character, and forces the actors to perform with a sense of space that is simultaneously intimate and large. “I think that’s a really perceptive idea of how to shed light on the suspense and the focus of this play, how we present and how we reveal the idea of truth and how people shape it for themselves, and shape how they present themselves to the world, and how many lies are tangled up in that.”