Timeless and dated

Tennessee Williams’s breakthrough play is a portrait of his dysfunctional family. A young writer, Tom (Williams’s real name), lives with his effusively domineering mother and his painfully coy sister, Laura. Mother, once a famous beauty, gets Tom to find an eligible chap for Laura. Tough call. Beautiful Laura has a deformed ankle and she’s just flunked out of secretarial college after suffering the embarrassment of vomiting over her type-writer. She now pines away at home forming sterile friendships with a colony of animal statuettes lodged in a glass case.

This set-up has the delicious simplicity of a comedy sketch. The conflict between the unstoppable mother and the self-effacing daughter promises fun galore. And we can’t wait for the suitor to show up because we feel certain he’ll be an insensitive oaf who mocks Laura’s shortcomings or a fast-talking cad who leaves her heart in ruins. But he’s neither. The ‘gentleman caller’ is a true gentleman.