BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
PLAYS
Baby Doll & Tiger Tail
Camino Real
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
Dragon Country
The Glass Menagerie
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
Not About Nightingales
The Notebook of Trigorin
The Red Devil Battery Sign
Small Craft Warnings
Something Cloudy, Something Clear
Spring Storm
Stopped Rocking and Other Screen Plays
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sweet Bird of Youth
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME I
Battle of Angels, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME II
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME III
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME IV
Sweet Bird of Youth, Period of Adjustment, The Night of the Iguana
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME V
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle), Small Craft Warnings, The Two-Character Play
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME VI
27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Short Plays
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME VII
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel and Other Plays
THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, VOLUME VIII
Vieux Carré, A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, The Red Devil Battery Sign
27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays
The Two-Character Play
Vieux Carré
POETRY
Androgyne, Mon Amour
In the Winter of Cities
PROSE
Collected Stories
Hard Candy and Other Stories
One Arm and Other Stories
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Where I Live: Selected Essays
By Tennessee Williams
Scene One
Scene Two
A Lovely Sunday
for Creve Coeur
The New York premiere of A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur took place at the Hudson Guild Theatre on January 10, 1979. It was directed by Keith Hack; set design by John Conklin; lighting design by Craig Miller; costume design by Linda Fisher; producing director, Craig Anderson. The cast in order of appearance was as follows:
DOROTHEA SHIRLEY KNIGHT
BODEY PEG MURRAY
HELENA CHARLOTTE MOORE
MISS GLUCK JANE LOWRY
It is late on a Sunday morning, early June, in St. Louis.
The interior is what was called an efficiency apartment in the period of this play, the middle or late thirties. It is in the West End of St. Louis. Attempts to give the apartment brightness and cheer have gone brilliantly and disastrously wrong, and this wrongness is emphasized by the fiercely yellow glare of light through the oversize windows which look out upon vistas of surrounding apartment buildings, vistas that suggest the paintings of Ben Shahn: the dried-blood horror of lower middle-class American urban neighborhoods. The second thing which assails our senses is a combination of counting and panting from the bedroom, to the left, where a marginally youthful but attractive woman, Dorothea, is taking “setting-up exercises” with fearful effort.
SOUND: Ninety-one, ha! —ninety-two, ha! —ninety-three, ha! —ninety-four, ha!
This breathless counting continues till one hundred is achieved with a great gasp of deliverance. At some point during the counting, a rather short, plumpish woman, early middle-aged, has entered from the opposite doorway with a copy of the big Sunday St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The phone rings just as Bodey, who is hard-of-hearing, sits down on a sofa in the middle of the room. Bodey, absorbed in the paper, ignores the ringing phone, but it has caused Dorothea to gasp with emotion so strong that she is physically frozen except for her voice. She catches hold of something for a moment, as if reeling in a storm, then plunges to the bedroom door and rushes out into the living room with a dramatic door-bang.
DOROTHEA: WHY DIDN’T YOU GET THAT PHONE?
BODEY [rising and going to the kitchenette at the right]: Where, where, what, what phone?
DOROTHEA: Is there more than one phone here? Are there several other phones I haven’t discovered as yet?
BODEY: —Dotty, I think these setting-up exercises get you overexcited, emotional, I mean.
DOROTHEA [continuing]: That phone was ringing and I told you when I woke up that I was expecting a phone call from Ralph Ellis who told me he had something very important to tell me and would phone me today before noon.
BODEY: Sure, he had something to tell you but he didn’t.
DOROTHEA: Bodey, you are not hearing, or comprehending, what I’m saying at all. Your face is a dead giveaway. I said Ralph Ellis—you’ve heard me speak of Ralph?
BODEY: Oh, yes, Ralph, you speak continuously of him, that name Ralph Ellis is one I got fixed in my head so I could never forget it.
DOROTHEA: Oh, you mean I’m not permitted to mention the name Ralph Ellis to you?
BODEY [preparing fried chicken in the kitchenette]: Dotty, when two girls are sharing a small apartment, naturally each of the girls should feel perfectly free to speak of whatever concerns her. I don’t think it’s possible for two girls sharing a small apartment not to speak of whatever concerns her whenever—whatever—concerns her, but, Dotty, I know that I’m not your older sister. However, if I was, I would have a suspicion that you have got a crush on this Ralph Ellis, and as an older sister, I’d feel obliged to advise you to, well, look before you leap in that direction. I mean just don’t put all your eggs in one basket till you are one hundred percent convinced that the basket is the right one, that’s all I mean. . . . Well, this is a lovely Sunday for a picnic at Creve Coeur. . . . Didn’t you notice out at Creve Coeur last Sunday how Buddy’s slimmed down round the middle?
DOROTHEA: No, I didn’t.
BODEY: Huh?
DOROTHEA: Notice.
BODEY: Well, it was noticeable, Dotty.
DOROTHEA: Bodey, why should I be interested in whatever fractional—fluctuations—occur in your twin brother’s waistline—as if it was the Wall Street market and I was a heavy investor?
BODEY: You mean you don’t care if Buddy shapes up or not?
DOROTHEA: Shapes up for what?
BODEY: Nacherly for you, Dotty.
DOROTHEA: Does he regard me as an athletic event, the high jump or pole vault? Please, please, Bodey, convince him his shape does not concern me at all.
BODEY: Buddy don’t discuss his work with me often, but lately he said his boss at Anheuser-Busch has got an eye on him.
DOROTHEA: How could his boss ignore such a sizeable object?—Bodey, what are you up to in that cute little kitchenette?
BODEY: Honey, I stopped by Piggly-Wiggly’s yesterday noon when I got off the streetcar on the way home from the office, and I picked up three beautiful fryers, you know, nice and plump fryers.
DOROTHEA: I’d better remain out here till Ralph calls back, so I can catch it myself. [She lies on the purple carpet and begins another series of formalized exercises.]
BODEY: The fryers are sizzling so loud I didn’t catch that, Dotty. You know, now that the office lets out at noon Saturday, it’s easier to lay in supplies for Sunday. I think that Roosevelt did something for the country when h
e got us half Saturdays off because it used to be that by the time I got off the streetcar from International Shoe, Piggly-Wiggly’s on the corner would be closed, but now it’s still wide open. So I went in Piggly-Wiggly’s, I went to the meat department and I said to the nice old man, Mr. Butts, the butcher, “Mr. Butts, have you got any real nice fryers?”—“You bet your life!” he said, “I must of been expectin’ you to drop in. Feel these nice plump fryers.” Mr. Butts always lets me feel his meat. The feel of a piece of meat is the way to test it, but there’s very few modern butchers will allow you to feel it. It’s the German in me. I got to feel the meat to know it’s good. A piece of meat can look good over the counter but to know for sure I always want to feel it. Mr. Butts, being German, he understands that, always says to me, “Feel it, go on, feel it.” So I felt the fryers. “Don’t they feel good and fresh?” I said, “Yes, Mr. Butts, but will they keep till tomorrow?” “Haven’t you got any ice in your icebox?” he asked me. I said to him, “I hope so, but ice goes fast in hot weather. I told the girl that shares my apartment with me to put up the card for a twenty-five pound lump of ice but sometimes she forgets to.” Well, thank goodness, this time you didn’t forget to. You always got so much on your mind in the morning, civics and—other things at the high school. —What are you laughin’ at, Dotty? [She turns around to glance at Dorothea who is covering her mouth to stifle breathless sounds of laughter.]
DOROTHEA: Honestly, Bodey, I think you missed your calling. You should be in Congress to deliver a filibuster. I never knew it was possible to talk at such length about ice and a butcher.
BODEY: Well, Dotty, you know we agreed when you moved in here with me that I would take care of the shopping. We’ve kept good books on expenses. Haven’t we kept good books? We’ve never had any argument over expense or disagreements between us over what I should shop for. —OW!
DOROTHEA: Now what?
BODEY: The skillet spit at me. Some hot grease flew in my face. I’ll put bakin’ soda on it.
DOROTHEA: So you are really and truly frying chickens in this terrible heat?
BODEY: And boiling eggs, I’m going to make deviled eggs, too. Dotty, what is it? You sound hysterical, Dotty!
DOROTHEA [half strangled with laughter]: Which came first, fried chicken or deviled eggs?—I swear to goodness, you do the funniest things. Honestly, Bodey, you are a source of continual astonishment and amusement to me. Now, Bodey, please suspend this culinary frenzy until the phone rings again so you can hear it this time before it stops ringing for me.
BODEY: Dotty, I was right here and that phone was not ringin’. I give you my word that phone was not makin’ a sound. It was quiet as a mouse.
DOROTHEA: Why, it was ringing its head off!
BODEY: Dotty, about some things everyone is mistaken, and this is something you are mistaken about. I think your exercises give you a ringing noise in your head. I think they’re too strenuous for you, ’specially on Sunday, a day of rest, recreation . . .
DOROTHEA: We are both entitled to separate opinions, Bodey, but I assure you I do not suffer from ringing in my head. That phone was RINGING. And why you did not hear it is simply because you don’t have your hearing aid on!
[The shouting is congruent with the fiercely bright colors of the interior.]
BODEY: I honestly ain’t that deaf. I swear I ain’t that deaf, Dotty. The ear specialist says I just got this little calcification, this calcium in my—eardrums. But I do hear a telephone ring, a sharp, loud sound like that, I hear it, I hear it clearly.
DOROTHEA: Well, let’s hope Ralph won’t imagine I’m out and will call back in a while. But do put your hearing aid in. I don’t share your confidence in your hearing a phone ring or a dynamite blast without it, and anyway, Bodey, you must adjust to it, you must get used to it, and after a while, when you’re accustomed to it, you won’t feel complete without it.
BODEY: —Yes, well— This is the best Sunday yet for a picnic at Creve Coeur . . .
DOROTHEA: That we’ll talk about later. Just put your hearing aid in before I continue with my exercises. Put it in right now so I can see you.
BODEY: You still ain’t finished with those exercises?
DOROTHEA: I’ve done one hundred bends and I did my floor exercises. I just have these bust development exercises and my swivels and—BODEY! PUT YOUR HEARING AID IN!
BODEY: I hear you, honey, I will. I’ll put it on right now.
[She comes into the living room from the kitchenette and picks up the hearing aid and several large artificial flowers from a table. She hastily moves the newspaper from the sofa to a chair behind her, then inserts the device in an ear with an agonized look.]
DOROTHEA: It can’t be that difficult to insert it. Why, from your expression, you could be performing major surgery on yourself! . . . without anesthesia . . .
BODEY: I’m just—not used to it yet. [She covers the defective ear with an artificial chrysanthemum.]
DOROTHEA [in the doorway]: You keep reminding yourself of it by covering it up with those enormous artificial flowers. Now if you feel you have to do that, why don’t you pick out a flower that’s suitable to the season? Chrysanthemums are for autumn and this is June.
BODEY: Yes. June. How about this poppy?
DOROTHEA: Well, frankly, dear, that big poppy is tacky.
BODEY: —The tiger lily?
DOROTHEA [despairing]: Yes, the tiger lily! Of course, Bodey, the truth of the matter is that your idea of concealing your hearing aid with a big artificial flower is ever so slightly fantastic.
BODEY: —Everybody is sensitive about something . . .
DOROTHEA: But complexes, obsessions must not be cultivated. Well. Back to my exercises. Be sure not to miss the phone. Ralph is going to call me any minute now. [She starts to close the bedroom door.]
BODEY: Dotty?
DOROTHEA: Yes?
BODEY: Dotty, I’m gonna ask Buddy to go to Creve Coeur with us again today for the picnic. That’s okay with you, huh?
DOROTHEA [pausing in the doorway]: Bodey, Buddy is your brother and I fully understand your attachment to him. He’s got many fine things about him. A really solid character and all that. But, Bodey, I think it’s unfair to Buddy for you to go on attempting to bring us together because—well, everyone has a type she is attracted to and in the case of Buddy, no matter how much—I appreciate his sterling qualities and all, he simply isn’t—[She has gone into the bedroom and started swiveling her hips.]
BODEY: Isn’t what, Dotty?
DOROTHEA: A type that I can respond to. You know what I mean. In a romantic fashion, honey. And to me—romance is—essential.
BODEY: Oh—but—well, there’s other things to consider besides—romance . . .
DOROTHEA [swiveling her hips as she talks]: Bodey, can you honestly feel that Buddy and I are exactly right for each other? Somehow I suspect that Buddy would do better looking about for a steady, German-type girl in South St. Louis—a girl to drink beer with and eat Wiener schnitzel and get fat along with him, not a girl—well, a girl already romantically—pour me a little more coffee? —Thanks. —Why do you keep forgetting the understanding between me and Mr. Ellis? Is that fair to Buddy? To build up his hopes for an inevitable letdown?
[Dorothea stops her swivels and returns to the living room to get the coffee Bodey has poured for her.]
BODEY: This Mr. T. Ralph Ellis, well . . .
DOROTHEA: Well, what?
BODEY: Nothing except . . .
DOROTHEA: What?
BODEY: He might not be as reliable as Buddy—in the long run.
DOROTHEA: What is “the long run,” honey?
BODEY: The long run is—life.
DOROTHEA: Oh, so that is the long run, the long run is life! With Buddy? Well, then give me the short run, I’m sorry, but I’ll take the short run, much less exhausting in the heat of the day and the night!
BODEY: Dotty, I tell you, Dotty, in the long run or the short run I’d place my bet on Buddy, not
on a—fly-by-night sort of proposition like this, this—romantic idea you got about a man that mostly you see wrote up in—society pages . . .
DOROTHEA: That is your misconception!— Of something about which you are in total ignorance, because I rarely step out of the civics classroom at Blewett without seeing Ralph Ellis a few steps down the corridor, pretending to take a drink at the water cooler on my floor which is two floors up from his office!
BODEY: Not really taking a drink but just pretending? Not a good sign, Dotty—pretending . . .
DOROTHEA: What I mean is—we have to arrange secret little encounters of this sort to avoid gossip at Blewett.
BODEY: —Well—
DOROTHEA: WHAT?
BODEY: I never trusted pretending.
DOROTHEA: Then why the paper flowers over the hearing aid, dear?
BODEY: That’s—just—a little—sensitivity, there . . .
DOROTHEA: Look, you’ve got to live with it so take off the concealment, the paper tiger lily, and turn the hearing aid up or I will be obliged to finish my hip swivels out here to catch Ralph’s telephone call.
BODEY [as she is turning up the hearing aid, it makes a shrill sound]: See? See?
DOROTHEA: I think you mean hear, hear! —Turn it down just a bit, find the right level for it!
BODEY: Yes, yes, I—[She fumbles with the hearing aid, dislodging the paper flower.]
DOROTHEA: For heaven’s sake, let me adjust it for you! [She rushes over to Bodey and fiddles with the hearing aid.] Now!—Not shrieking. —But can you hear me? I said can you hear me! At this level!?
BODEY: Yes. Where’s my tiger lily?
DOROTHEA: Dropped on the fierce purple carpet. Here. [She picks it up and hands it to Bodey.] What’s wrong with you?
BODEY: I’m—upset. Over this maybe—dangerous—trust you’ve got in Ralph Ellis’s—intentions . . .
DOROTHEA [dreamily, eyes going soft]: I don’t like discussing an intimate thing like this but—the last time I went out in Ralph Ellis’s Reo, that new sedan he’s got called the Flying Cloud . . .
BODEY: Cloud? Flying?
DOROTHEA [raising her voice to a shout]: The Reo is advertised as “The Flying Cloud.”