Something Cloudy, Something Clear
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Something Cloudy, Something Clear is an autobiographical play by Tennessee Williams that was originally written in 1941 as a short play titled The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer, debutted posthumously in Provincetown in 2006. In 1962, Williams retitled and expanded The Parade into a full-length play that was first produced Off-Off-Broadway in 1981.[1][2] Both versions of the play are set on the wharfs of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and tell the story of a young playwright named August dealing with his unrequited homosexual love for another man.
The situations and characters in both were "clearly drawn from a very autobiographical foundation,"[3] with August's dilemma reflecting a relationship Williams had in Provincetown with "his actual lover for [one] summer, Kip Kiernan."[2] The Parade, in fact, was written after a fight with Kiernan, and Williams reflected in 1962 that "[the version of Kip in that play] is very, in fact completely different from Kip as he was. When someone hurts us deeply, we no longer see them at all clearly. Not until time has put them back in focus."[1]
Williams' revised version of the play, titled Something Cloudy, Something Clear, opened on August 24, 1981 at The Bouwerie Lane Theatre in New York to unenthusiastic reviews.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Leverich, Lyle (1995). Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: Crown. ISBN 0-393-31663-7. p. 364.
- ^ a b Fritscher, Jack. "We All Live on Half of Something" (reprint), Playbill, 2001-09-20. Retrieved on 2007-05-30.
- ^ a b Sanderson, Jordan, and Raymond W. Wachter. "Something Cloudy, Something Clear" (fee required), Literary Encyclopedia, 2005-03-03. Retrieved on 2007-05-30.
Plays by Tennessee Williams | |
|---|---|
| Apprentice plays | Candles to the Sun (1936) • Spring Storm (1937) • Fugitive Kind (1937) • Not about Nightingales (1938) • Battle of Angels (1940) • You Touched Me (1945) • Stairs to the Roof (1947) |
| Major plays | The Glass Menagerie (1944) • A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) • Summer and Smoke (1948) • The Rose Tattoo (1951) • Camino Real (1953) • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) • Orpheus Descending (1957) • Suddenly, Last Summer (1958) • Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) • Period of Adjustment (1960) • The Night of the Iguana (1961) |
| Later plays | The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963) • The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968) • In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) • Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969) • Small Craft Warnings (1972) • The Two-Character Play (1973) • The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975) • This Is (An Entertainment) (1976) • Vieux Carré (1977) • Creve Coeur (1979) • Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980) • The Notebook of Trigorin (1980) • Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981) • A House Not Meant to Stand (1982) |
| Other | One act plays by Tennessee Williams |
