set photo

First Preview Date	Opening Date
July 9, 2016	July 9, 2016

In 27 WAGONS FULL OF COTTON, after Jake, a shady, middle-aged cotton gin owner, burns down rival Silva Vicarro’s mill, Vicarro attempts to enact vengeance by seducing Flora, Jake’s delicate young wife. In 1976, Meryl Streep was honored with Outer Critics Circle and World Theater awards and Drama Desk and Tony nominations for her performance as Flora.

In KINGDOM OF EARTH, a flood is surging in the Mississippi Delta, and Chicken’s property is only safe until old man Sikes down the road dynamites his levee to save himself. While Chicken waits alone in his kitchen for the inevitable blast, he receives an unexpected visit from his dying half-brother, Lot, and Lot’s wife of but one day, Myrtle. Leaving Lot upstairs to rest, Chicken assesses Myrtle as a potential threat to his inheritance of the estate, currently under Lot’s name. Chicken and Myrtle find common ground but not even footing in their similar experiences of the inescapable hardness of the world – two “lost, sinful, puzzled” souls falling into a familiar power dynamic and bracing themselves as the waters rise. Estelle Parsons’s 1966 performance as Myrtle garnered a Tony nomination for Best Leading Actress.

Tennessee Williams’s work changed the landscape of American theater. This evening of his short plays will perform in the heart of the NY Theatre District, opening for the summer season.

Tennessee Williams

The Production:

2 By Tennessee Williams

Executive Producers Roy Nevans and John Lant, in association with Edmund Gaynes, are pleased to present 2 By Tennessee Williams: 27 WAGONS FULL OF COTTON and KINGDOM OF EARTH, a limited engagement directed by Marilyn Fried and starring Kathryn Luce Garfunkel.

Featured in the cast are Anthony Alessandro, Jim Biberi and Mike Keller.

The creative team includes Liz Stearns (Associate Director), SKS Theatrical Marketing (Marketing and Promotions), Tim Secrest and John B. Forbes (Lighting Design), Hunter Dowell (Costume Design), Jessica and Jennifer Davison (Sound Design), and Meagan Parker (Set Design).

Tennessee Williams was an American playwright and author of many stage classics. Along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller he is considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th-century American drama. After years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie (1944), closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). His drama Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on the short list of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Long Day’s Journey into Night and Death of a Salesman. Much of Williams’ most acclaimed work was adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.