At first blush, this late play by the great American playwright, Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983), is the old story of the handsome young stranger who blows into town from who-knows-where to cure the unhealed wounds of a community and unfreeze the bitter heart of the heroine. There’s always something mysterious about the stranger in these tales, a sense that he isn’t like other people, has exceptional powers, and was “sent.” He’s always a little divine, or a little demonic. Or both.

When I say this story is “old,” I mean really OLD. Every culture, as far back as we have literature or records, has at least one of these ritually-structured stories of the sacrificial hero who descends into the place of the dead and brings back someone prematurely lost to life. Most cultures have several different versions, often with striking similarities just under the surface.

The ancient Greeks had quite a few versions. There’s the story of Persephone, kidnapped by Hades and then restored to her mother, Demeter. Or the story of Psyche, tasked by her vengeful mother-in-law, Aphrodite, to retrieve the cosmetic magic of the Queen of Hell. Or the story of Odysseus, who can’t get home until he has visited the underworld and spoken with the dead. And, most important to this play, the story of Orpheus.

Orpheus was the son of Calliope, muse of epic poetry, and either the King of Thrace or the god Apollo. His lyre and his legendary gift of enchanting music were given by Apollo, whatever his parentage. Orpheus was the princely musician whose song was so overwhelming and moving that he could charm wild animals, trees, rocks, and even the ghosts in the Underworld. His bride was Eurydice, who was bitten by a snake shortly after their wedding and died. Orpheus descended into the Underworld, enchanting the monstrous guardians with his lyre and pleading his sorrow so movingly that stonehearted Hades himself wept and released Eurydice. But, says the legend, Orpheus was not allowed to look back at his wife as she followed him from darkness into the Upper World. Just as he arrived at the entrance to the living world, Orpheus looked back to see if Eurydice was still there. She had only time for “farewell” when death reclaimed her.

After this disaster, Orpheus was inconsolable. The wild women celebrating the rites of Dionysus tried to draw him into their ritual, but he rejected them. Maddened, these Maenads tore him asunder with their hands and teeth. His severed head and his lyre were thrown into the river, where together they journeyed, singing the story of death and return. Zeus ultimately placed the lyre in the heavens as a constellation. The Greeks made this story central to one of their greatest “Mysteries” (we still don’t know the details of the ritual) and wrote “Orphic” poetry and song to commemorate the myth of death and resurrection through initiation.

For all that he goes from the land of the living down into death and returns back to the light, Orpheus is himself an Underworld divinity. And this underscores the two ambivalent meanings of that Underworld (or Hell, or Hades) that must have appealed to Williams. For this darkness is both the destination of the dead, therefore stasis and no escape, and it’s the source of unconscious power, of erotic energy, of release from the too-civilized, of ecstasy and creative emotion.

So, the smothering small Southern town of this play with its violent past and its narrow, mean-spirited ways is certainly Hell and, for Williams, a dark place indeed. Lady’s soul has been killed by it—she’s lost her father with his light, generous spirit and his music, her lover abjured her, her child is dead, and she’s the long-suffering wife of a venal, vicious man. When Val Xavier swaggers into her life, it’s tempting to think of him as the bringer of light. But this Orpheus, swathed in snakeskin (snakes were the messengers from Hades) and carrying his enchanted guitar, comes from the glittering Dionysian darkness. He is dangerous and this very danger is what brings Lady back to life and, thence, to tragedy.

For Tennessee Williams this ritual tragedy must have had enormous appeal. Indeed, Orpheus Descending is a rewrite of a very early, failed play, Battle of Angels (1940). Seventeen years after it flopped and years after the great plays that solidified his reputation (The Glass Menagerie, 1945; A Streetcar Named Desire, 1948: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1955, to name a few), Williams was still possessed by the tale. The Orpheus myth that he ultimately imposes on his play actually organizes the raw materials according to a personal myth that Williams expresses in so much of his work. The pattern usually depicts a crushing conventional environment that oppresses the sensitive hero and/or heroine. This society often appears noble, but actually simply papers over the meanness, violence, and domination that it is founded on. There arrives a harbinger of hope: someone electric with life, someone opening a door to possibility. For a moment, there’s a glimpse of a better world. Then it’s gone.

Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, a narrow, suspicious society that he replicates in this play. He grew up in Missouri. He was a sickly child, who spent years semi-paralyzed, and was shunned by his increasingly abusive father. His mother, who cherished a romantic self-image as a fine, genteel lady in a courtly Southern society, was somewhat smothering. Williams’s sister, Rose, with whom the playwright was close throughout his life, was a schizophrenic who was treated by a frontal lobotomy that left her institutionalized for the rest of her life. Williams himself suffered the isolation of being homosexual and also battled alcoholism after his sister’s sad treatment. Yet, he managed to turn this pain into some of the best theatre of the mid-twentieth century. An encouraging mentor to several young playwrights, Williams as an adult was an outgoing man who gained well-deserved fame and success and found lasting love and warm friendships.

This ability to use one’s art to overcome the “hell” of being odd in a stifling, conventional world—the wisdom of Williams’ own experience—is a theme that is repeated in Orpheus Descending. For Val, drifting, his gift of music is the one sure thing that gives him solace, calming him when he’s distressed and working his magic on his listeners. Likewise, for poor Vee Talbott, her escape from a loveless, oppressive marriage to a wrathful husband is her painting. In her primitive works she is a “visionary,” who sees things, not as they are but as her inner sight perceives them. As in the Orpheus myth, where the head and lyre continue to sing and enchant after death, these are characters that are trapped, then torn apart by malicious circumstance, but whose art goes on transforming well beyond the constraints of their difficult personal lives.

© 2008 by Eileen Warburton

Further reading:
Spoto, Donald. The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams. Da Capo Press (Reprint) 1997
Williams, Tennessee. Memoirs. Doubleday, 1975.


DISCUSSION SUNDAY at 2ND STORY THEATRE:
Discussion Sunday puts on your thinking cap.
First Sunday of each production.
Pre-show: 2pm and post-show: 5pm.

Ed Shea, Artistic Director, and Eileen Warburton, PhD, Humanities Scholar-in-Residence, take a look at the humanity themes roused by the plays. Essays written by Dr. Warburton are available online and at the performance. Humanities discussions are free and open to the public.

RHODE ISLAND COUNCIL FOR THE HUMANITIES

Discussion Sunday at 2nd Story Theatre is made possible through major funding support from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, an independent state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Discussion Sunday do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.