Small Craft Warnings

Small Craft Warnings is a play by Tennessee Williams, an expansion of an earlier one-act play, Confessional, that was included in the Williams Dragon Country compilation of 1970. It centers on a motley group of people gathered in a seedy coastal bar in Southern California.

The characters include lusty, needy beautician Leona Dawson, an embittered middle-aged woman who repeatedly plays Jascha Heifetz's recording of Tchaikovsky's Serenade Melancholique on the jukebox; her ne'er-do-well live-in lover Bill McCorkle; Doc, an alcoholic who lost his license to practice medicine but still does; Violet, who risks becoming the target of Leona's wrath when she flirts with Bill; Steve, the middle-aged short order cook who is resigned to his fate slinging hash in a waterfront dive; Monk, the congenial bartender; and two gay men – Quentin, a washed-up screenwriter, and Bobby, a young man bicycling from Iowa to Mexico that Quentin picked up on the road.

An article about a 2015 regional production noted that Williams wrote: " 'It is the responsibility of the writer to put his experience as a being into work that refines it and elevates it' to make an audience feel the truth of that work." That article analyzes the play, stating that "there is no single dramatic arc... Interspersed throughout are "confessional" moments, monologues of observation and revelation from the individual characters."

The play is a "kaleidoscopic ... of monologues... as the action... becomes frozen and muted."

The play premiered on April 2, 1972 at the Off-Broadway Truck and Warehouse Theatre. Richard Altman directed a cast that included Helena Carroll as Leona and William Hickey as Steve. During the course of the run, Tennessee Williams himself took over the role of Doc. Candy Darling, a transsexual performer from the Warhol stable of "superstars," played the role of Violet, a bewitching, trampy girl whom most of the male characters desire.

The play was produced in the West End at the Comedy Theatre in 1973, with Elaine Stritch, Peter Jones, George Pravda, Edward Judd, Frances de la Tour, James Berwick, Tony Beckley, Eric Deacon, and J M Bay.

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