Summer and Smoke
Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams presented by T. Schreiber Studio for Theatre and Film directed by Terry Schreiber Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke opened on Broadway in 1948, a year after A Streetcar Named Desire . It never achieved the success of the earlier play. It resembles Streetcar in its theme, and its central character, Alma Winemiller, is clearly the dramatic cousin of Blanche Dubois. It’s a delicate play. The story of course, concerns the high-strung, idealistic Alma and her love for the rake next door, John Buchanan. Their relationship never develops into romance; they never reconcile their opposing attitudes and lifestyles during that summer of 1913. But late in the play John comes round to Alma’s idealistic position. She changes as well, and sees life as John had before his reversal. She’s absorbed in that passion that Blanche Dubois calls desire. She says she and John have become “like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, a