Suddenly Last Summer

Libretto by Gideon Lester and Daniel Fish; adapted from original play by Tennessee Williams.

1S; boy choir
2fl(II=afl)-asax-trbn-perc:brake drum/large cym/finger cym/cowb/tgl/seed rattles/metal rattle/tin can with metal balls/paper-pft-strings

1930's New Orleans

Suddenly Last Summer takes place in Mrs. Violet Venable’s grand home in the Garden District of New Orleans. Mrs. Venable is showing a young brain surgeon, Dr. Cukrowicz, around the tropical garden created by her late son, Sebastian. Sebastian died last summer while traveling with his cousin, Catherine Holly. Since Catherine returned to New Orleans, she has been obsessively recounting the events that led to Sebastian’s death and has been committed to a private mental asylum, St. Mary’s, at her aunt’s expense.

Mrs. Venable tells the doctor of her close relationship with her late son, a poet who wrote just one poem a year. She recalls a trip that she and Sebastian took to the Galapagos Islands, where they observed birds of prey devouring sea turtles on a beach.

The doctor tells Mrs. Venable of his pioneering work in brain surgery at Lion’s View, a state asylum. He has developed an experimental lobotomy procedure, for which he needs funding. Mrs. Venable offers to support his research—if he agrees to perform a lobotomy on Catherine that will prevent her from telling the story that threatens to destabilize the Venable family. She has brought him to the house to evaluate Catherine and to persuade him to undertake the operation.

Catherine arrives at the house, in the care of nuns from St Mary’s. As she waits to meet her aunt and the doctor, she again begins the story of Sebastian’s death in the beach town of Cabeza de Lobo, as the nuns attempt to restrain her. Catherine reveals that Sebastian was homosexual, and that she—like his mother before her—was procuring young men for him when he died.

Catherine’s mother and brother, George, arrive and try to silence Catherine. Their reason is in part financial; Sebastian’s will contains a substantial provision for Catherine and George, which Mrs. Venable is planning to contest if Catherine continues telling her story.

Mrs. Venable and the doctor return. Catherine realizes that he is from Lion’s View, the State Asylum, and understands what her aunt is planning to do to her. Catherine confides in the doctor that Sebastian rescued her and took her to Europe last year, after a stranger had tried to assault her during a Mardi Gras ball.

The doctor prepares to examine Catherine. He injects her with a truth serum, and she recounts the entire story of Sebastian’s demise in Cabeza de Lobo.

Synopsis by Gideon Lester. Courtesy of Fisher Center at Bard College.