Richard Thomas in Tennessee Williams centennial event
In celebration of Tennessee Williams’ centennial year, Westport Country Playhouse will stage a special performance by acclaimed actor Richard Thomas in “A Distant Country Called Youth,” based on a collection of lively and evocative letters written by a young Tennessee Williams, on Monday, August 29, 7 p.m.
“A Distant Country Called Youth” begins as the boy Thomas Lanier Williams moves through family travails and professional rejection to his first success, and concludes with the triumphal Broadway opening of “The Glass Menagerie.” The letters are a remarkable blend - earnest, hilarious, anguished, touching - as the chameleon Williams writes to family and friends, lovers and celebrities. The piece spotlights these fairly obscure 25 years in Williams’ life. Here is a young Thomas Lanier Williams, growing up, exploring and finding his artistic voice as Tennessee Williams.
The production is adapted by Steve Lawson from "The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Vol. I, 1920-1945," edited by Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler. When Lawson (who also directs the production) read these letters, he immediately sensed they contained the seeds of a theatrical event. He was granted permission to proceed by the Williams estate, and the adaptation premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2001. It has since played at Hartford Stage (where Richard Thomas first performed it), and subsequently at theaters across America including the Kennedy Center as well as in England and Ireland.