Financial Times
Summer and Smoke
By Alastair Macaulay
Published: October 20 2006
Now that the subjugation of women has again resumed front-page status, Tennessee Williams's rare play Summer and Smoke has more social relevance than one at first assumes. But during its first half this play seems to be a minor version of something better. A well-brought-up young lady falls headlong in love with a good-looking but none too well-behaved young man. We might almost be watching Showboat or Carousel. As he grows more depraved, more doomed, and her conflict of repression and desire is ever more evident, the play seems to be a lesser version of some other play by Tennessee Williams himself.
But this is a play on a slow burn, and its final scenes are superb. It demonstrates many of the virtues that make Williams one of the supreme playwrights of the 20th century. He is the finest master of the dramatic metaphor since Ibsen (the meanings of both "summer" and "smoke" here open poetically). And he has a piercing sympathy for the emotionally fragile. The story he tells of the repressed Alma ends up quite unlike that of his other heroines. The young doctor John learns from her about soul (smoke); she learns from him about the flesh (summer). He gives her sleeping pills; she remarks to another man: "The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God."
Rosamund Pike reveals in Alma a deeply affecting blend of pathos, nobility and eloquence. Beautiful and fragile in looks, she plays the role with riveting focus. She is perfectly contrasted with the American actor Chris Carmack, with his fallen- angel charm and his mixture of sensual abandon and painful embarrassment. There is more than one kind of heartbreak in this play: "All rooms are lonely where there is only one person."
Summer and Smoke Press Reviews
http://www.seesummerandsmoke.com/
A Curtain Up New Jersey Review
Summer and Smoke
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance January 14, 2007
An early work of Tennessee Williams, Summer and Smoke is filled with the rich and rueful lyricism that permeated The Glass Menagerie. That it also has a simmering erotic edge that ignited more viscerally in A Streetcar Named Desire, secures its place as a provocative and significant play in the Williams canon. This glorious co-production comes to the Paper Mill Playhouse from the Hartford Stage, where it was, and still is, directed with a gratifying balance of toughness and tenderness by Michael Wilson. Except for Kevin Anderson replacing Marc Kudisch in the role of John Buchanan Jr., the cast, including the marvelous and mesmerizing Amanda Plummer, remains in tact. That all the plays compassionate textures are also in tact is also good news.
There isn't a minor role that isn't given a memorable twist, including Alma's stifling friends and the bevy of Glorious Hill, Mississippi townspeople, dressed for all seasons by the talented David C. Woolard, who contribute to the social flavor and temperament of the times. Despite a rather large cast, our attention is drawn to the soul of the play, Alma's spiraling fall from grace. It remains as heartbreaking as that of any of Williams' heroines. This stunning revival can stand tall among anything currently on or off Broadway.
Curtain Up
http://www.curtainup.com/summerandsmokenj.html
New York Herald Tribune
Summer and Smoke
By: Howard Barnes
(October 7, 1948).
"the production at the Music Box finds Tennessee Williams as fumbling and obvious as he is trenchant and evocative in 'A Streetcar Named Desire.'"
Google Answers
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/100619.html
Taken from:
"At the Theatre," by Brooks Atkinson. The New York Times (October 7,1948).
The New York Times
The Hope of Connection in William's World
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: September 6, 1996, Friday
But under the direction of David Warren, ''Summer and Smoke'' does indeed unfold as an awkward clash of elements that goes way beyond its central paradox. A musical sense of tempo is crucial to playing anything by Williams; here, nearly everyone seems to be following a different orchestral baton.
Consider, for example, the actual music meant to set the mood for the production. John Gromada's lovely piano-based score is plaintive, understated and elegiac, conforming to the traditional reading of the play as a sort of tone poem. The acting, on the other hand, is most often either manic and overwrought or flat and mechanical. Humorous passages stand out like one-liners, and lines that should probably be murmured are screamed.
Add to this the fact that the star performances -- by Mary McDonnell as Alma Winemiller, a repressed, genteel spinster, and Harry Hamlin as John Buchanan Jr., the hedonistic doctor she loves -- are often in direct contradiction of Williams's own descriptions of them. And while their characters may be polar opposites, these actors only seldom suggest the hope of connection that gives the play its pathos.
The New York Times
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9A00EEDF163BF935A3575AC0A960958260
Showbiz Radio
Summer and Smoke: Another Solid Show from Port City
By: Laura and Mike Clark
June 10, 2006
The cast worked really well together. They all fit into their roles really well. The casting was really well done. The show is about two hours long with a fifteen minute intermission. Usually when you have plays that are just talking and very character driven, they can be really boring and drawn out. This show moved along at at a really nice pace. It wasn’t boring.
One of the disadvantages of the crowded set was the lighting was sometimes too focused. It made it easy for the actors to walk out of the lights. All of a sudden they would be in a deep dark shadow. That was a little distracting. I don’t know how you would fix that other than making the stage a lot brighter, but you really didn’t need that. It had the feel of 1916’s. Another thing, at one point there was a sound effect of a gun being fired. That just wasn’t effective. It sounded like a small little pop on the door, like someone was knocking on the door. It would have been more effective for that scene, that’s on of the turning points in the play, if they could have had a cap gun go off off stage and fired that.
ShowBizRadio
Theater Info for the Washington DC region
http://www.showbizradio.net/2006/06/10/review-pcp-summer-and-smoke/
