Suddenly Last Summer

About the show

In 1936, in the Garden District of New Orleans, Mrs. Violet Venable, an elderly socialite widow from a prominent local family, has invited a doctor to her home. She talks nostalgically about her son Sebastian, a poet who died under mysterious circumstances on the fictional island of Cabeza de Lobo, not (as it is sometimes assumed) in South America, by referring to Catharine's return "from Europe" aboard the Berengaria, an Atlantic liner. During the course of their conversation, she offers to make a generous donation to support the doctor's psychiatric research if he will perform a lobotomy on Catharine, her niece, who has been confined to St. Mary, a private mental institution, at her expense since returning to America. Mrs. Venable is eager to "make her peaceful" once and for all by erasing her memories of Sebastian's violent death and his homosexuality; Mrs. Venable is especially adamant that Catharine stop talking about the latter, in order to preserve her late son's reputation. Catharine arrives, followed by her mother and brother. They are also eager to suppress her version of events, since Mrs. Venable is threatening to keep Sebastian's will in probate until she is satisfied, something Catharine's family can't afford to challenge. But the doctor injects Catharine with a truth serum and she proceeds to give a scandalous account of Sebastian's moral dissolution and the events leading up to his death, how he used her to procure young men for his sexual exploitation, and how he was set upon, mutilated, and partially devoured by a mob of starving children in the street. Mrs. Venable lunges at Catharine but is prevented from striking her with her cane. She is taken off stage, screaming "cut this hideous story from her brain!" Far from being convinced of Catharine's insanity, however, the doctor concludes the play by stating he believes her story could be true.