Community Reviews. Showing Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Summer and Smoke. Jan 07, Mark Villareal rated it really liked it. I enjoyed the story and how the author leads you through their emotions and thoughts.
The author does a solid job and bringing you into each character and building them up so the reader can identify the why behind their beliefs. I enjoy the author's abilities in how he tells a story through effective storytelling by ensuring a foundation of each character is built first. View 1 comment. Summer and Smoke is a play set in Mississippi in the early 20th Century about the conflict between the spiritual and the physical. Alma, the daughter of a minister, had to assume many of the duties in the parish as her mother became mentally ill.
Alma, whose name means "soul" in Spanish, is a sensitive, virtuous woman concerned with the spiritual side of life, but sexually repressed. Her neighbor, John, is a physician and grew up in a home containing his father's medical office. He is very sensua Summer and Smoke is a play set in Mississippi in the early 20th Century about the conflict between the spiritual and the physical.
He is very sensual, and spends his time drinking and chasing fast women at the Moon Lake Casino. Alma and John have an attraction to each other, but totally different lifestyles. John does not think of the spiritual, and shows Alma the anatomy chart of the body hanging in his office asking, "You think you're stuffed with roseleaves? When John goes away to fight an epidemic, he returns with appreciation for the spiritual side of life. Alma, who had been hysterical and repressed, tells John, "But now the Gulf wind has blown that feeling away, like a cloud of smoke.
Alma is ready for a relationship, but John is already pledged to another. The author seems to be saying that both the spiritual and the physical are necessary to be a complete person.
The set shows the rectory on one side, and the doctor's office on the other side of the stage. The angel "Eternity" is kneeling in the park in the center, pouring out healing waters needed for both their life on earth, and eternal life. The play has characters similiar to A Streetcar Named Desire , and The Glass Menagerie with sensitive women, strong sensual men, and characters with mental illness.
Feb 24, Samir Rawas Sarayji rated it it was amazing Shelves: american-lit , play. Yes 5 stars because sometimes you just want to! It's a beautifully rendered love story with fully developed characters. It's straightforward, focused and touching. Yet there is much to like in the execution: the dialogue is spot on and, for the first time, the stage directions are brilliant in their simplicity, helping me visualise every action.
I love how I could care for both Alma and John, they are opposites, so the attraction is strong but the chance of success minimal, yet the journey that u Yes 5 stars because sometimes you just want to!
I love how I could care for both Alma and John, they are opposites, so the attraction is strong but the chance of success minimal, yet the journey that unfolds is what counts. View 2 comments. May 02, Duffy Pratt rated it really liked it Shelves: play. There are some moments where the themes of the play merge with the dialogue.
And I don't know if I would like this or not. Even reading it, I felt like I was being hit over the head sometimes. Maybe good actors could pull this stuff off. But I think it would be really hard to do these moments. But on the whole, the characters in this play are engaging, and they are less of a pure type than other characters. I've read some reviews here comparing Alma to Blanche, and Johnny to Stanley, but I don't There are some moments where the themes of the play merge with the dialogue.
I've read some reviews here comparing Alma to Blanche, and Johnny to Stanley, but I don't think it fits very well at all. I think Alma feels much more real than Blanche ever did. For me, Blanche was always more of an idea than a person. And Johnny has very little in common with Stanley. I could see Brando playing Johnny, but he would come over more like the Brando of Guys and Dolls, than anything out of Streetcar. I also love the basic idea of this play. The main characters both have an intense spiritual, and a strong sensual side to their personality.
They long to be together, but at the start, he is living a life of pleasure, while she has repressed that aspect of her character.
Through their interaction, they both switch their personality -- he represses his love of pleasure, while she opens up to hers. And in the process they never actually connect. This sounds like it should be tragic, but I found the ending refreshingly upbeat, at least as far as Tennessee Williams goes.
There may not be any hope for Alma and John together, but for these characters there seems to be more to life than just a single fixation. Good stuff. Nov 04, Jim rated it really liked it Shelves: plays.
Tennessee Williams 's plays continue to fascinate me with their wild poetry. Summer and Smoke is the story about the strange love between Alma, a minister's daughter, and John, a physician's son. Alma is strait-laced; and John, debauched. The tension between their two respective ways of life keeps them apart. In time, there a a strange change in their personalities that leads to a surprising ending. Jul 07, robin friedman rated it it was amazing. Summer And Smoke I have seen and read Tennessee Williams' play "Summer and Smoke" several times over the years and the work has stayed with me.
I have reread the play and seen the movie for the first time after reading John Lahr's recent biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh. The play tells the story of a failed, unconsummated relationship between Alma Winemi Summer And Smoke I have seen and read Tennessee Williams' play "Summer and Smoke" several times over the years and the work has stayed with me. The play tells the story of a failed, unconsummated relationship between Alma Winemiller and John Buchanan.
Alma is a singer and the daughter of an aging minister and his deeply emotionally troubled wife. Alma has spent her life devoted to her father, the church, and to performing the parsonage duties that ordinarily would have been the responsibility of the wife.
She is sexually repressed, prim, and spinster-like even for a young woman of She suffers from hysteria and insomnia and is increasingly dependent on pills. Alma has been in love since childhood with her neighbor, John Buchanan who has been raised by his physician father alone after his mother died. John follows his father to become a doctor, but as a young man returning to town he lives a licentious life, full of gambling, drink, and sex with the loose women of the town.
In an important scene of the play, John tries to persuade Alma to accompany him to a cheap room at the local casino. She indignantly refuses. The critical scene of the play occurs when a drunken, dissipated John shows Alma a chart of the human anatomy. This scene gave the play its original title, "Chart of Anatomy".
John shows Alma the brain the belly, and the lower part: "this part down here is the sex which is hungry for love because it is sometimes lonesome. Alma replies that there is something "not shown on the anatomy chart" -- the soul which is "there just the same, yes there". And "it's that that I loved you with -- that.
Alma comes to terms with her body and offers herself to John. John, however, has settled down and is to be married to a younger, more conventional woman. At the end of the play, a saddened but tragically more self-aware Alma offers herself for casual encounters, at best, to travelling salesman and strangers. The play shows a dualism in the conflict between body and soul or flesh and spirit.
The play aims to unite the two as part of a vibrant, full life, something neither of the primary characters are able to achieve. Some readers have criticized the play for talking about the conflict between flesh and spirit as opposed to dramatizing the conflict in action. Williams himself was conflicted about the play and said differing things about it.
At one point he said of Alma, "she is my favorite because I came out so late and so did Alma, and she had the greatest struggle. Williams later became critical of the melodramatic, metaphysical character of "Summer and Smoke". In the mids, he wrote the work into an essentially different play, "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale. Samuel French. Ideal for. Casting Notes. Mostly male cast Includes adult, mature adult, young adult, late teen characters. Lead Characters. John Buchanan, Jr.
Summer and Smoke - Play. Log in to add to your bookmarks! Alma Winemiller Summer and Smoke - Play. Reverend Winemiller Summer and Smoke - Play. View More. Half-Price Tickets. View More Ticket Discounts. This page is only accessible by StageAgent Pro members. John had become a true gentleman in his time away, and so he kindly, but firmly refused her offer.
Having failed Alma did the only thing she could and offered her blessings to the happy couple. Her story did not end in complete rejection, though. Alma Winemiller could not have John, but as a whole new woman she was ready to meet new people, and enjoy a new life. Summer and Smoke. Why do I want it: Because I love Dr. Buchanan, and it will complete my transformation into a new woman.
What is preventing me from getting it: Dr. Buchanan has decided to be a gentleman, and believe in the soul. What am I willing to do to get what I want: To be open and honest. Make myself vulnerable, and hurt the feelings of an old pupil.
Bibliography: Williams, Tennessee. Related documents. This individual must possess strong organizational, interpersonal. Alma at Northeastern University. Click here for the audition selections. Transport Canada STC granted for gas detection. Informal Life Skill Courses info with dates. From the way she cuts into her big speeches with slow precision, winding up to a fiery finish, we come to understand this minister's daughter as someone who would make a fine preacher herself, were this not early 20th-century Mississippi.
The object of her restrained desire and somewhat less restrained resentment is the handsome John Buchanan Nathan Darrow , son of the town doctor a cranky Phillip Clark. John seems destined for a life of comfort and respect, despite his best efforts: A regular at the dodgy Moon Lake Casino, John enjoys gambling and sex with the casino owner's daughter, Rosa a sympathetic Elena Hurst.
When John turns his attention to the buttoned-up Alma, she doesn't know whether to respond with surprise, elation, or hostility — so she settles for a very real combination of the three. Few actors would be able to make that synthesis seem as completely natural as Ireland does. She has an instinctual grasp on this character, who is both highly intelligent yet steadfast in her romantic vision of the world even as it constantly fails to live up to her expectations Ireland lets the audience know when this happens with her unmistakable facial expressions.
Barbara Walsh plays her ice-cream-slurping mother with the noisy discourtesy of an ignored child. Tina Johnson is a hoot as Mrs.
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