Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival - Something Cloudy, Something Clear

By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Dane Eissler

Something Cloudy, Something Clear, written by Williams in 1981, is set in Provincetown in 1940. Williams created a version of himself named August to tell the story of Williams’ first love affair—and to be a character in it. In the play, his beloved is a young dancer called Kip, just as he was in life.

Ghosts from later and earlier times in Williams’ life interrupt the action of Something Cloudy, Something Clear. Williams gave these disruptive phantoms their real names– his lover Frank Merlo and his high school girlfriend Hazel Scott. Tallulah Bankhead is called The Actress. Masked as August, Williams can address their ghosts with declarations of love he probably never dared to say to them while they were alive. Williams invented a ghostly friend for Kip named Clare, a twenty-year old girl who will die of diabetes soon after the summer ends. August, like Tennessee Williams, will survive to tell the tale.

The Festival demonstrates the continuity of Williams' classical and experimental texts by staging Something Cloudy, Something Clear on the same set and with the same cast asThe Glass Menagerie. In the Festival’s repertory casting the actress playing Laura in The Glass Menagerie becomes Clare in Something Cloudy, Something Clear; Jim, the Gentleman Caller, becomes Kip; Amanda becomes Tallulah Bankhead; and Tom’s absent father becomes Death.

Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes, with no intermission

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