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Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. Clean from markings. In good all round condition. Dust jacket in fair condition. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 350grams, ISBN:
Publisher:
Plays and Players Journal August Vol. 9 No. 11
Published:
1962
Alibris ID:
8247370841
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Seller's Description:
4to magazine, 66 pages, photographs, reviews, articles: pages 23 to 42 include the full text of the play in triple column format with some photographs, the play was first produced in London at the Royal Court on June 13th 1962 (the American production was earlier); glossy paper covers, almost vg.
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VG- Mass market paperback in red and white wraps with b/w still from film with Tony Franciosa and Jane Fonda to front. 1st Signet printing (Signet D2210). 127pp. + ad. Red-tinted page edges. B/W stills from film, cast of first stage production to front. VG-. Wraps are soiled with touches of foxing along spine, hinges and edges. Titles and figures still bright and clear. Magic tape repair to 1/4" tear lower front hinge, holding fine and well. Binding tight, pages lightly toned (stronger with foxing to pages facing wraps) but clean and unmarked.
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Seller's Description:
Acceptable. STARVING STUDENT SCRIPT! Sometimes you need an extra. Former actor has marked up the script with highlighting or underlining, name or notes. Please expect to see shelf wear, edge wear and scuff marks to the covers. Used but still useful. NOT SO PRETTY looking ACTING EDITION SCRIPT economically priced for your dramatic and theatrical needs.
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Seller's Description:
Acceptable. THE SCRIPT! Not so pretty. ACTING EDITION SCRIPT will serve as a useful Starving Student Edition when you need an extra! Some shelf wear and edge wear to the covers. THE FORMER ACTOR HAS MARKED UP THE SCRIPT including name, . highlighting, underlining and sidebar notes. Economically priced ACTING EDITION for your performance needs.
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Seller's Description:
Good. THE SCRIPT! Plenty of markings to the front cover. 1961 publication date. Inside the dialogue flows clearly. Useful. This is the ACTING EDITION SCRIPT!
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Seller's Description:
Good. THE SCRIPT! Not so pretty. Acting Edition. Some shelf wear and edge wear to the covers. Some scuff marks to the covers. The dialogue flows clearly.
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Seller's Description:
Good. This is THE SCRIPT! Presentable ACTING EDITION. Some shelf wear to the covers. Good binding and the dialogue flows clearly. Enjoy this ACTING EDITION SCRIPT reliable for your performance.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. D 2210. Illustrated with black and white stills from the 1962 film. First (mass market) paperback printing. Previous owner's name on verso of front cover, else very good or better in printed wraps.; 127 pages.
Sandwiched between "Sweet Bird of Youth" and "The Night of the Iguana", Tennessee Williams' 1960 play, "Period of Adjustment" is a deliberate attempt to write in a lighter vein. Williams had been criticized for writing dark tragic dramas full of tormented individuals and lurid sex and violence. When a critic accused Williams of "plunging into the sewers", he tried to shift away in "Period of Adjustment" and express himself differently. Williams' subtitled the work "High Point Over a Cavern" because the action of the play takes place in a house over a slowly-shifting geological fault, and "A Serious Comedy". The play lacks the force and passion of Williams' darker works, but it does not deserve dismissal. It describes the rekindling of efforts of love and of two couples getting along in situations that had seemed hopeless.
The three-act play is set on a Christmas Eve in the late 1950s in a Memphis home gradually shifting into a fault. Ralph and Dorothy Bates own the home. They have been married for five years with a small son. Dorothy has just walked out of the house when she learns that Ralph has quit his job working as a clerk for her wealthy father. The other couple, George and Isabel Haverstick, have been married for one day. Ralph and George are old army buddies from the Korean War. The newlyweds pay Ralph and Dorothy a visit. They are getting along poorly, after their day of married life, and have not consummated their relationship.
Ralph and George catch up with each other. Ralph claims to feel no passion for his wife. She is physically unattractive and Ralph confesses to marrying her largely because of her family money and the possibility of a job. George has been in and out of hospitals following the Korean War. He suffers from a case of nervous shaking which the doctors are unable to diagnose or cure. Isabel worked as a nurse and cared for George during his most recent hospitalization, and the two apparently got married on an impulse. With Isabel leaving her job, neither of them have work or money. They drive to see Ralph and Dorothy in a cheap battered old Cadillac that had seen long service as a funeral hearse. Unlike the two men, Dorothy and Isabel had no prior acquaintance with each other.
Williams' describes the conflicts between the two couples and the relationships that develop among the four people. Each person shows substantial insight into the problems of the other couple with far less insight into his or her own problems. Each shows signs of insecurity, loneliness, cynicism, impotence, frigidity, or nervous disorders -- conditions that make their appearance in many Williams' plays. In this play, the issues are not deeply explored. Both couples' resolve their difficulties, at least temporarily. Ralph and Dorothy reconcile and perhaps appreciate each other more than they did before Dorothy walked out. George and Isabel consummate their marriage and appear willing to make an effort with one another.
The play is enjoyable if on the whole it does not sharply probe its characters or situations. It is much easier to read than several of Williams' other, more complex dramas. Williams said that "Period of Adjustment" "isn't my best by a long shot, but is nevertheless as honest a play as I've written." He claimed that the play expressed "more belief in the truth of people having tender need of each other, transcending their personal vanities and hurt feelings, than any of my other plays, with the possible exception of The Rose Tattoo." "The Rose Tattoo" is an earlier Williams romance which shares some themes with "Period of Adjustment". It is a beautiful work, one of Williams' best.
In his biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh" (2014), John Lahr describes "Period of Adjustment" as a meditation "on changes of heart and the possibility of reconciliation." Lahr discusses the importance of the play to Williams' subsequent career as it marked his break with the director, Elia Kazan. Kazan has directed many of Williams' plays and had agreed to direct "Period of Adjustment." He backed out of directing the play because he had committed to direct a film of a play by William Inge. Kazan and Williams could not agree on a new schedule and the two never worked together again. George Roy Hill directed the Broadway production. In the subsequent 1962 film of "Period of Adjustment", a young Jane Fonda played the virginal new wife, Isabel.
Readers interested in exploring the scope of Tennessee Williams' work will want to get to know "Period of Adjustment". The work is included in the second of the two Library of America volumes devoted to Williams' plays.
Robin Friedman
SubRosaDallas
Jul 4, 2007
Comedy from Tennnesee?
Tennessee Wiliams is best known for his taut, psychological dramas. But here is a rare exception in a comedy of newlyweds experiencing a honeymoon where nothing goes right and a wife's jealousy of her husband's best friend. The title comes from the bride and groom's discussions of how all newlyweds must undergo a "period of adjustment". Knowing that Tennessee Williams was gay, one can not help seeing a homoerotic attachment between the husband and his best friend. This unspoken, subconcious tension is one of the wife's chief obstacles to overcome. But, this would be lost on the casual reader.
