The Books: “Summer and Smoke” (Tennessee Williams)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next on my script shelf:

Next Tennessee Williams play? Summer and Smoke, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume 2: Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real.

No way can I talk about this play in any rational or logical way. I am too close to it. I have too much affinity for it. In this play – perhaps not one of Williams’ best – I see myself, I see myself in all my flaws, my hopes, my dreams … It is one of the clearest purest expressions of who I am that was not actually written by me. I worked on this play intensely for about a year – with my acting mentor and another actor (my friend David – a terrific actor). We had the hopes of putting up a production of it which did not come to pass – but the weeks and weeks and weeks we worked on it (the play is basically made up of long long scenes between the two main characters – and we worked on them all) is an experience that enriched my life immeasurably. It was one of those times when not only did I feel like we were actually getting close to what a good teacher of mine called “the pulse of the playwright” – but I also felt like I learned and grew as a person. I started to understand myself better – what motivates me, what holds me back, what my true concerns are … Miss Alma, the spiritual virginal librarian, her fate intertwined with her childhood friend – Dr. John Buchanan … a wild man, a bucking horse of a man … spoke so deeply to me that I can’t really describe it. I kept a journal of our Summer and Smoke rehearsals the entire time we worked on it … and it’s incredible reading. I’ve never worked so hard on a thing in my life. It got INSIDE me. Miss Alma was no longer words on the page … she actually has a life, she lives and breathes … and she was the one showing me the way. A total mind-meld.

This is a lot of actor talk. But that’s what I think of when I think of Summer and Smoke. I think of immersing myself in that world, in the mind of that woman, for a solid year. I think of how it changed me forever.

She says: “Oh, I suppose I am sick, one of those weak and divided people who slip like shadows among you solid strong ones. But sometimes, out of necessity, we shadowy people take on a strength of our own. I have that now.”

The truth in that. For me ….

John says to Alma: “I thought it was just a Puritanical ice that glittered like flame. But now I believe it was flame, mistaken for ice.”

This has resoundingly personal implications. That has happened to me before. My flame has been mistaken for ice.

It was just one of those experiences where I couldn’t tell where my life ended and the play began. Never had that before. David and I had some truly profound moments together working on that piece. It changed our friendship forever.

I still have hopes that someday I will be able to be in a production of this play. Miss Alma continues to teach me, continues to help me … She reappears at the darndest times, reminding me of what she learned during her life … She knows. She understands.

She is one of his most tragic heroines. I am absolutely in love with her. In all her complexity, all her problems … I feel grateful that I was able to get that close to her.

The story is simple:

Alma is the daughter of a minister. She is a spiritual woman, and was a spiritual girl. A typical Tennessee Williams female character – not really attached to the earth. (Therein lies her problem. Underneath that spirituality is a fire that burns so hot that she eventually is consumed. In the world she lives in – where “good girls” don’t feel things like that … she is doomed to live a life where she is split off from the most vital part of herself.)

John Buchanan is the boy who lives next door to Alma. He grows up to be a doctor. But he is wild. He sleeps with whores, he drinks to excess … Everyone had very high hopes for him, including his disapproving father … and while Dr. John is a wonderful doctor – you might say that it is his vocation – his lifestyle scandalizes the small town. He gambles, drinks, whores around … and yet somehow … there is still some connection with Alma … his childhood friend.

It’s a classic dichotomy situation:

Alma represents the Spirit. John represents the Earth. It is so apparent that these two, with their different outlooks and lifestyles, are actually made for each other. And not only that – but there is nobody else on earth for either one of them. Alma has loved John all her life. She has a wrenching monologue at the end when she admits this: “I have loved you all the days of my life …” John takes her out on a couple of dates which are disasters. Something about her – her spirituality, her insistence on seeing that there is good on this planet, that people are redeemable – makes him feel ashamed of himself, and his vile ways. So he takes it out on her. He decides to rub her face in filth. He takes her to a gambling casino for their date, he drives 100 miles an hour, he tries to get her drunk … but the thing that makes this play so tragic, so heartrendingly tragic … is that John is not a bad guy. He’s not Stanley Kowalski. John is a damaged soul, and he is determined to live up to everyone’s horrible opinions of him. Fine, you think I’m a whoring drunkard? Then I will BE a whoring drunkard. Alma tries to convince him that he has a soul … that his soul is pure … John will hear none of it.

And yet … he can’t help but be drawn to Alma.

There are these painful scenes of the two of them … both in their separate houses … standing at the windows, looking through the curtains at one another … at 3 o’clock in the morning.

The love they have for each other is tormenting. Unexpressed. And could they ever come together? Could Alma ever let go of her relatively prissy pose (she’s very eccentric … she’s an oddball) and accept that underneath all of that is an animal drive for sex? Like we all have? Can she accept that part of herself? And can John accept that above his drive for earthly pleasures is actually a soul? Something more to life than just eating, drinking, fucking?

They have extended scenes together – they are really the only two people in the play – where they battle this out.

The ending never fails to rip my heart out. I still cannot read that last scene … where they say goodbye … without tears rolling down my face.

A true unrequited love. On both sides.

The ending is tragic. You can tell, at the end, that Alma is on her way to becoming Blanche DuBois. In the very last scene, Alma – who has had a nervous breakdown (again, with Williams’ theme of sexual hysteria) – emerges from her seclusion only to find that John Buchanan, due to a tragic event in his life, has reformed his ways. He is making his way as a doctor, gaining success, and he is now engaged to Nellie, a girl from the town. An unremarkable girl. Nobody special. At the same time – because of this horrible event in his life (he basically was responsible for the murder of his father) – he has realized that Alma, with all her philosophizing about the soul, was onto something all along. He decides that he will continue to strive upward, to reach for a better life, to be a better man … Alma must realize that her only chance at happiness is now past. There is no other man on earth for her. She has become addicted to sleeping pills. She pops them all the time. She goes down to the park and sits on a bench, in a doped-out haze. A traveling salesman comes and sits down by her. They have a short sweet scene of introduction. And the play ends with Alma picking him up. Alma – the town virgin, the spiritual light of the earth – will now begin to give her body away. She has finally realized that her animal side must have a release … and yet she had hoped, beyond hope, that it would be with John – that sex with John would not just be an animalistic experience – but something filled with love. Her ideal. Sex must be paired with love. It must be something that would bring her closer to God … because it has to do with love. Now that she has no chance at love … there is some inner shift that happens. She decides to take pleasure where she can. She becomes a whore.

They switch places. John strives for spiritual growth. Alma descends into the purely physical. It is too late for either of them to save each other. Kindred spirits always, but destined to be apart.

It’s just fucking awful.

I will excerpt the killer last scene between the two of them. Alma comes to Dr. John – unaware that he has become engaged … and basically offers herself to him sexually. It is an enormous sacrifice to someone like her … it represents a betrayal of all her deepest held convictions … but she is now desperate, and completely broken. She laughs hysterically for no reason. She is always on the verge of panic. Dr. John then must inform her that there is no hope … he has promised himself to another woman. The key here – something that most actors who play Dr. John forget (but that David never forgot) – is that it is as wrenching for him to let her go as it is for her to let him go. He just has better coping skills. But he, too, is saying goodbye to his last chance at real happiness. And he knows it. They both know it.

EXCERPT FROM Summer and Smoke, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume 2: Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real, by Tennessee Williams

[A bell tolls the hour of five as Alma comes hesitatntly in to John’s office. She wears a russet suit and a matching hat with a plume. The light changes, the sun disappearing behind a cloud, fading from the steeple and the stone angel till the bell stops tolling. Then it brightens again.]

ALMA. No greetings? No greetings at all?

JOHN. Hello, Miss Alma.

ALMA. [speaking with animation to control her panic] How white it is here, such glacial brilliance! [She covers her eyes, laughing]

JOHN. New equipment.

ALMA. Everything new but the chart.

JOHN. The human anatomy’s always the same old thing.

ALMA. And such a tiresome one! I’ve been plagued with sore throats.

JOHN. Everyone has here lately. These Southern homes are all improperly heated. Open grates aren’t enough.

ALMA. They burn the front of you while your back is freezing!

JOHN. Then you go into another room and get chilled off.

ALMA. Yes, yes, chilled to the bone.

JOHN. But it never gets quite cold enough to convince the damn fools that a furnace is necessary so they go on building without them.

[There is the sound of wind]

ALMA. Such a strange afternoon.

JOHN. Is it? I haven’t been out.

ALMA. The Gulf wind is blowing big, white — what do they call them? cumulus? — clouds over! Ha-ha! It seemed determined to take the plume off my hat, like that fox terrier we had once named Jacob, snatched the plume off a hat and dashed around and around the back yard with it like a trophy.

JOHN. I remember Jacob. What happened to him?

ALMA. Oh, Jacob. Jacob was such a mischievous thief. We had to send him out to some friends in the country. Yes, he ended his days as — a country squire! The tales of his exploits!

JOHN. Sit down, Miss Alma.

ALMA. If I’m disturbing you …?

JOHN. No — I called the Rectory when I heard you were sick. Your father told me you wouldn’t see a doctor.

ALMA. I needed a rest, that was all … You were out of town mostly …

JOHN. I was mostly in Lyon, finishing up Dad’s work in the fever clinic.

ALMA. Covering yourself with sudden glory!

JOHN. Redeeming myself with good works.

ALMA. It’s rather late to tell you how happy I am, and also how proud. I almost feel as your father might have felt — if … And — are you — happy now, John?

JOHN. [uncomfortably, not looking at her] I’ve settled with life on fairly acceptable terms. Isn’t that all a reasonable person can ask for?

ALMA. He can ask for much more than that. He can ask for the coming true of his most improbably dreams.

JOHN. It’s best not to ask for too much.

ALMA. I disagree with you. I say, ask for all, but be prepared to get nothing! [She springs up and crosses to the window.] No, I haven’t been well. I’ve thought many times of something you told me last summer, that I have a doppelganger. I looked that up and I found that it means another person inside me, another self, and I don’t know whether to thank you or not for making me conscious of it! — I haven’t been well … For a while I thought I was dying, that that was the change that was coming.

JOHN. When did you have that feeling?

ALMA. August. September. But now the Gulf wind has blown that feeling away like a cloud of smoke, and I know now I’m not dying, that it isn’t going to turn out to be that simple …

JOHN. Have you been anxious about your heart again? [He retreats to a professional manner and takes out a silver watch, putting his finger on her wrist]

ALMA. And now the stethoscope? [He removes the stethoscope from the table and starts to loosen her jacket. She looks down at his bent head. Slowly, involuntarily, her gloved hands lift and descend on the crown of his head. He gets up awkwardly. She suddenly leans toward him and presses her mouth to his] Why don’t you say something? Has the cat got your tongue?

JOHN. Miss Alma, what can I say?

ALMA. You’ve gone back to calling me “Miss Alma” again.

JOHN. We never really got past that point with each other.

ALMA. Oh yes, we did. We were so close that we almost breathed together.

JOHN. [with embarrassment] I didn’t know that.

ALMA. No? Well, I did. I knew it. [Her hand touches his face tenderly] You shave more carefully now? You don’t have those little razor cuts on your chin that you dusted with gardenia talcum …

JOHN. I shave more carefully now.

ALMA. So that explains it! [Her fingers remain on his face, moving gently up and down it like a blind person reading Braille. He is intensely embarrassed and gently removes her hands from him] Is it — impossible now?

JOHN. I don’t think I know what you mean.

ALMA. You know what I mean, all right! So be honest with me. One time I said “no” to something. You may remember the time, and all that demented howling from the cock-fight. But now I have changed my mind, or the girl who said “no”, she doesn’t exist anymore, she died last summer — suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her. No, she doesn’t live now, but she left me her ring — You see? This one you admired, the topaz ring set in pearls … And she said to me when she slipped the ring on my finger — “Remember I died empty-handed, and so make sure that your hands have something in them!” [She drops her gloves. She clasps her head again in her hands] I said, “But what about pride?” — She said, “Forget about pride whenever it stands between you and what you must have!” [He takes hold of her wrists] And then I said, “But what if he doesn’t want me?” I don’t know what she said then. I’m not sure whether she said anything or not — her lips stopped moving — yes, I think she stopped breathing! [He gently removes her craving hands from his face] No? [He shakes his head in dumb suffering] Then the answer is “no”!

JOHN. [forcing himself to speak] I have a respect for the truth, and I have a respect for you — so I’d better speak honestly if you want me to speak. [Alma nods slightly] You’ve won the argument that we had between us.

ALMA. What — argument?

JOHN. The one about the chart.

ALMA. OH — the chart!

[She turns from him and wanders across to the chart. She gazes up at it with closed eyes, and her hands clasped in front of her]

JOHN. It shows that we’re not just a package of rose leaves, that every interior inch of us is taken up with something ugly and fucntional and no room seems to be left for anything else in there.

ALMA. No …

JOHN. But I’ve come around to your way of thinking, that something else is in there, an immaterial something — as thin as smoke — which all of those ugly machines combine to produce and that’s their whole reason for being. It can’t be seen so it can’t be shown on the chart. But it’s there, just the same, and knowing it’s there — why, then the whole thing — this — this unfathomable experience of ours — takes on a new value, like some — some wildly romantic work in a laboratory! Don’t you see?

[The wind comes up very loud, almost like a chorus of voices. Both of them turn slightly, Alma raising a hand to her plumed head as if she were outdoors]

ALMA. Yes, I see! Now that you no longer want it to be otherwise you’re willing to believe that a spiritual bond can exist between us two!

JOHN. Can’t you believe that I am sincere about it?

ALMA. Maybe you are. But I don’t want to be talked to like some incurably sick patient you have to comfort. [A harsh and strong note comes into her voice] Oh, I suppose I am sick, one of those weak and divided people who slip like shadows among you solid strong ones. But sometimes, out of necessity, we shadowy people take on a strength of our own. I have that now. You needn’t try to deceive me.

JOHN. I won’t.