Orpheus Descending

For the John Mellencamp album, see Orpheus Descending (album).

First edition cover
(New Directions, 1958)

Orpheus Descending is a three-act play by Tennessee Williams. It was first presented on Broadway on March 17, 1957, with Maureen Stapleton and Cliff Robertson, under the direction of Harold Clurman, but had only a brief run (68 performances) and modest success.[1] It was revived on Broadway in 1989, directed by Peter Hall and starring Vanessa Redgrave and Kevin Anderson.[2] The production ran for 13 previews and 97 performances.[3]

The play is a rewrite of an earlier play by Williams called Battle of Angels, which was written in 1940. Williams wrote the character of Myra Torrance for Tallulah Bankhead, but she turned down the role, saying "The play is impossible, darling, but sit down and have a drink with me."[4] The production previewed in Boston the same year, starring Miriam Hopkins. It was the first produced play written by Williams and by his account it "failed spectacularly". At one point, Boston's city censors and the City Council threatened to shut down the production over its "lascivious and immoral" language.[5] Battle of Angels remained un-produced in New York for 34 years, until the Circle Repertory Company opened their sixth season with it in 1974, directed by Marshall W. Mason.

Williams was rewriting Battle of Angels by 1951.[6] When Orpheus Descending appeared in 1957, Williams wrote: "On the surface it was and still is the tale of a wild-spirited boy who wanders into a conventional community of the South and creates the commotion of a fox in a chicken coop. But beneath that now familiar surface it is a play about unanswered questions that haunt the hearts of people and the difference between continuing to ask them...and the acceptance of prescribed answers that are not answers at all."

  1. ^ "Orpheus Descending" (1957) on the Internet Broadway Database
  2. ^ Kissel, Howard (September 26, 1989). "'Orpheus' Descends With An Overacted, Miscast Version". Chicago Trubune. Retrieved February 1, 2017.
  3. ^ "Orpheus Descending" (1989) on the Internet Broadway Database
  4. ^ Williams, Tennessee (1978). Where I Live: Selected Essays. New York: New Directions Publishing. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-8112-0706-5.
  5. ^ "Clean Up or Shut 'Angels' -- Boston," New York Daily News, 7 Jan. 1941
  6. ^ [5] Williams, Tennessee. The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume II, 1945–1957. New York: New Directions, 2004, p. 380 ISBN 0-8112-1600-4