Unseen Tennessee Williams radio play published in literary magazine

"As one of the 20th century's most successful playwrights, Tennessee Williams penned popular works at the very pinnacle of US theater, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Years before his almost unparalleled Broadway triumphs, however, the aspiring writer then known simply as Tom wrote a series of short radio plays as he struggled to find a breakthrough."

"The play incorporates all the theatrical elements of early radio horror, said Andrew Gulli, the publication's managing editor. A storm, howling wind, shadows, a house perched over the sea, flickering candles, mysterious footsteps on the stairs, spectral beings as well as early hints of the themes and devices Williams would return to in his most famous later works: isolation, fear, the shades of gray between imagination and reality, and a house haunted by memory and the private terrors of those who inhabit it."

"It is a significant find according to scholars of Williams's early days and upbringing in Missouri. The Strangers never made it to Broadway, and is believed to have enjoyed only a single performance on a rural radio station in Iowa as part of a short-lived series called Little Theater of the Air in 1938. But the script's dark themes, characters and plot twists provide a fascinating, albeit limited glimpse at the style Williams was honing on his way to the big time with plays exploring repression, desire and loneliness."

The Strangers is a supernatural radio play written by Tennessee Williams while he was an undergraduate at the University of Iowa. The script uses classic radio-horror elements such as storm, howling wind, shadows, a house perched over the sea, flickering candles, mysterious footsteps, and spectral beings. The play reveals early treatments of themes that recur in later Williams plays: isolation, fear, blurred lines between imagination and reality, and houses haunted by memory and private terrors. The work likely saw a single 1938 performance on a rural Iowa radio station and was recently published from the Harry Ransom Center.

Read at www.theguardian.com