By Tennessee Williams,  Presented by Red Stitch Actor's Theatre, 2018

“Most people’s lives—what are they but trails of debris, each day more debris, more debris, long, long trails of debris with nothing to clean it all up but, finally, death.”

Savagely poetic and provocative, Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer is a nightmarish contemporary masterpiece.

This is Sebastian’s garden, a place where the line between truth and lies, sanity and insanity are blurred. Welcome to the eerie Garden District, filled with Venus fly traps, subversive secrets, and broken hearts.

The only son of wealthy widow Violet Venable, Sebastian, has died while on vacation with his rebellious cousin Catharine. What the girl saw that day last summer was so horrible that she is presumed mad and locked away in an asylum to keep her mouth shut.

As time goes on, Catharine’s ravings about Sebastian’s sexuality and fate become so transgressive that his dear mother Violet decides that locking her away isn’t enough. She calls in an aspirational young Doctor to have the girl lobotomised and cut out her hideous story for good.

A thrilling examination of legacy, sanity, and sexuality, this Southern gothic melodrama will cut straight through the heart with its visceral imagery and erotically charged symbolism

From the director of Red Stitch’s multiple award nominated The Moors, Stephen Nicolazzo, and featuring the astounding Jennifer Vuletic and Kate Cole, this production marks the company’s first foray into the iconic and beloved playwright, Tennessee Williams’ beautiful and theatrical mind.

Suddenly Last Summer received critical acclaim and was nominated for two Green Room Awards.

Featuring Kate Cole, Caroline Lee, Harvey Zielinski, Charles Purcell, Zoe Boesen, Chanella Macri, and Jennifer Vuletic

Set & Costume Design Eugyeene Teh
Sound Design & Composition Daniel Nixon
Lighting Design Katie Sfetkidis

★★★★ "A stunning, thorny jewel in the queer canon." Tim Bryne, Time Out

“The most sensuous of our theatre makers, Nicolazzo and his design team overwhelm our senses. They sedate us with mysterious beauty.” Chris Boyd, The Australian

"Jennifer Vuletic provides a spidery, brittle and increasingly malignant incarnation of the vampiric Violet, while Kate Cole navigates bafflement and clarity to arrive at a quiet shore of heroism as a sane woman traumatised by a story everyone thinks is too horrible to be true. Both of them are charismatic, achieve a flawless drawl and deliver the playwright’s lyricism with an intuitive rhythm and a complex and perverse emotional palette. They will impress anyone who cares about acting." Cameron Woodhead, The Age

"Suddenly Last Summer is dark, unsettling and delightful; sharp, intrusive and hilarious." Keith Gow, Witness Performance