In Tennessee Williams’s unique tragicomedy, A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, four women in Depression-era St. Louis live and work together in a valiant effort to stave off loneliness and despair. And, along the way, they uncover false idols — and maybe even themselves. Performances begin on September 14 and run through October 21, 2018, with opening night on September 23 at Theatre at the St. Clement’s (423 West 46th St). A fitting venue for this production, St. Clement’s was founded by Tennessee William’s cousin, Reverend Sidney Lanier. Tickets are $55 – $99 and can be purchased by visiting LaFemmeTheatreProductions.org or by calling (866) 811-4111.

Like his breakthrough 1944 play The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ A Lovely Sunday for Creve Couer (1979) is set in a humble St. Louis apartment in the 1930s. It’s another of the many late-career titles that failed to revive Williams’ faded career. But it fared somewhat better with critics than other of his plays from the 1960s and 1970s. There had been a try-out at the Spoleto festival in Charleston, SC, and New York critics who traveled south to check the play out found promise in it. But when it opened in New York, the play received mixed reviews and quickly closed. Nearly 40 years later, it’s been revived by La Femme Theatre Productions at Theatre at St. Clements, under the direction of Austin Pendleton, who has spent a good deal of time and effort in recent years exploring various titles in the Williams canon. While this production won’t rehabilitate the play’s reputation completely, it certainly deserves to be seen by those interested in all chapters of the Williams career. It’s the story of four women whose lives converge in a kind of tragicomic farce. Central to the plot is Dorothea (Jean Lichty), a nervous, illusion-riddled Memphis belle in the Blanche DuBois mode. S …Read more