The UK Professional Premiere

“One of the most personal plays I have ever written” - Tennessee Williams.

A long-overdue opportunity for London audiences to see Tennessee Williams’ penultimate play in its UK professional premiere.

Set in Provincetown, Cape Cod in 1940, Something Cloudy, Something Clear re-imagines the events of a pivotal summer in the life of a playwright called August as he teeters on the brink of his first Broadway success. Living in a beach shack with only his phonograph, typewriter and a bottle of rum for company, August’s isolated existence is suddenly blown apart by the arrival of a young woman named Clare and her ethereally beautiful ‘brother’, Kip…

A delicately woven tapestry of past and present, vulnerability and toughness, impetuous action and mature insight, the play seeks reconciliation between love and art, life and death – the cloudy and the clear - exploring notions of time, of memory, and of love in its many forms.

Tennessee Williams’ other plays include A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer and Not About Nightingales.

Directed by exciting young director Tamara Harvey, currently Assistant Director at Shakespeare’s Globe, whose future work includes the UK tour of The Graduate.


The Press on Something Cloudy, Something Clear

TIME OUT CRITICS' CHOICE

FINANCIAL TIMES CRITICS' CHOICE

"The Finborough Theatre has developed a reputation out of all proportion to its tiny size. It has played its part in the careers of many remarkable playwrights, directors, and actors, including Mark Rylance, Ken Campbell, Naomi Wallace, David Farr, Anthony Neilson and Rachel Weisz. Now it is presenting the British professional premiere of Tennessee Williams's Something Cloudy, Something Clear. Something Cloudy, Something Clear was written in 1981. And it evokes a summer before that prime began: the 1940 summer that Williams, newly arrived on the American east coast in his late 20s, spent by the sea at Cape Cod. . . What's dazzling is how Williams layers the play . . . A beautifully youthful haze of mingled hope and sorrow hangs in the air . . .The Finborough production, directed by Tamara Harvey for Bright Angel, is young, tender, absorbing... Kate Sissons, a gallant last-minute replacement as Clare, seemed to take the role effortlessly, as if by destiny. The poetry of the drama is fresh here: it feels uniquely Williams. Watching, you feel each of the central three characters both from outside and inside, with alternating compassion and criticism." Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times

"A memory play with added poignancy. The play was initially unfavourably received, but this British premiere by the young company Bright Angel shows how misjudged those reactions were, confirming it as a work of sensitivity with, in its evocation of doomed youth, strong echoes of Scott Fitzgerald . . .the playwrights daring use of time frames, poetic sensibility and and contrasting satiric eye lifts the piece on to an entirely different plane. Something Clears achievement is not just in the deftness of its double-edged meanings, but also in its devastating portrait of human relations, as transactions with soiled bargaining counters. Whether for love or economic survival, they all amount to the same thing, a pessimism veiled by the beauty of Tamara Harveys production, which captures Williams inner world as surely as she does his Atlantic exterior one. In a fine cast, James Hillier as August, the writers swilling alter-ego, Bruce Godfree as Kip and Kate Sissons as Clare are all equally heartbreaking. Nikki Leigh Scott and Susan Bovell are both sensational."
Carole Woddis, Evening Standard

"Haunting lost memory play by Tennessee Williams . . .Many of Williams last plays are either too short or too self-indulgent, but some are ripe for revival. And none riper than the full-length, two-act, Something Cloudy, in which Williams revisited a crucial personal summer of 1940 on the beach in Provincetown. . .The play is written with yearning, poignancy and regret, and that heart-stopping, fleet poetical touch so typical of Williams at his best. Tamara Harveys intimate production is superbly acted by James Hillier as August, the William surrogate, Bruce Godfree as the Nijinsky-like Kip and Susan Bovell both as a rapacious visiting agents wife and Tallulah Bankhead." Michael Coveney, Daily Mail

"Time and again, some phrase flashes, and your heart stops with amazement that this poor wreck of a man could still find the words to describe without self-pity some deep private pain. Full marks to bright Angel, and the director, Tamara Harvey, for rescuing it." John Peter, Sunday Times

"This is the first UK professional performance of Tennessee Williams Something Cloudy, Something Clear . . .A remarkably evocative Cape Cod beach-hut and pier has been created in the intimate space of the Finborough Theatre, with whitewashed floorboards in the round, and a rickety desk, typewriter, Victrola record player and bed on the stage area. The actors with their light, relaxed clothes, gestures and accents give the whole show a real air of the late-summer Atlantic. You can almost taste the rum that is waved about in copious quantities. James Hillier turns in a thoughtful performance as August and gives us a real flavour of the man...Bruce Godfree gives an intensity and fragility to the character of Kip, and Kate Sissons as Clare sparkles . . .This is an excellent and vivid production, which I thoroughly recommend." Julia Hickman, Theatreworld Internet Magazine

"Masterful work provides a memorable evening . . .its a rare chance these days to get to see a play by a master that has lain, as it were, gathering dust on a shelf, but such is what is in store for any Tennessee Williams fan with Something Cloudy, Something Clear, currently enjoying its British professional premiere . . .the play, like finding a hitherto unknown Shakespearean text, provides a memorable event."
Paul Nelson, indielondon.co.uk

"Intimacy suits this late Williams play with its mix of memory and sharp experience . . .Tamara Harveys sympathetic revival (for Bright Angel theatre company) shows a major writer's someone whose minor works still hold intense interest. There may not be the force and scope of a Streetcar or a Cat, but this play's no more small-scale or personally obsessive than The Glass Menagerie . . .this tiny thrust staging moves you like anything, as it builds, aided by Rilke and Ravel - to its climax."
Timothy Ramsden, reviewsgate.com

"I was excited by the prospect of seeing this drama, and not only due to the fact that it was being professionally staged in the UK for the very first time. By the end of a beautiful and moving First Night, I was not disappointed . .Passionate, sexual tension is never far away in Tamara Harveys production. High praise to all the actors, but especially to James Hillier, whose interpretation of August was something to behold. Gentle, sexy, handsome, vulnerable, stunning. And to Kate Sissons as Claire, who was stirring and brave, as she needed to be And as the great actress and personality Tallulah Bankhead, Susan Bovell was quite simply brilliant. If you like your dramas steamy, tense, beautiful then I would implore you to see this small yet stunning play." Denise Bailey, PA Arts and Leisure

"If you, like me, you find something heartcatching even in Tennessee Williams lesser-known late plays, then this British professional premiere of a 1981 play in which Williams revisited his own life in the summer of 1940 proves a major event. The play layers past and present, career and love, flotsam and jetsam in a poetic nexus." Alastair Macauley, Financial Times

"Unjustly neglected, elegiac, late Tennessee Williams memory play is beautifully revived by Tamara Harvey at the refurbished Finborough Theatre."
Carole Woddis, Metro Life, Evening Standard

"The Finborough Theatre, a classic fringe theatre above a refurbished pub in Earl's Court, is currently staging Tennessee Williams' rarely performed late play, Something Cloudy, Something Clear. In a fascinating programme piece (and how rare it is to find really good programmes in fringe theatres) Eve Adamson recalls working with Tennessee Williams and producing Something Cloudy, Something Clear, in 1981. . . .The point about the Finborough, like several other leading fringe theatres, is that they manage not just to stage rarely seen plays but that they do them so well, and in doing so shed new light on writer's reputations. . .you are unlikely to find a more intense yet intimate performance of his work than this production at the Finborough." Paul Webb, theatrenow.com