quinn222

Not So Hot


Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly Last Summer"swirls around a dog-eat-dog death match. In one corner: Violet Venable,monstrous, rich and ready to do something awful to protect the pretty fiction she's created about her dead son, Sebastian. In the other corner: her fragile niece Catharine Holly, who knows the facts about homosexual cousin Sebastian - how he lived and the gory way he died.Violet wants the woman lobotomized to cut away those truths.

Williams may not be at his best in this 1958 melodrama, but he's at his most overwrought and overripe. Which is why it takes two top-notch performances to make the thing tick. As such, Mark Brokaw's production for the Roundabout Theatre Company, running through Jan. 14 at the Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., disappoints. Carla Gugino's lush beauty and extravagant performance makes her hypnotic as Catharine. But Blythe Danner lacks fire and ferocity - a shrunken Violet, all but swallowed up by Santo Loquasto's fussy costumes and overblown set. In the thankless role of the doctor, Gale Harold, as required by thescript, is simply handsome and blond.