THE STORY: The New York Herald-Tribune writes: “This, says Mr. Williams through the most sympathetic voice among his characters, ‘is a true story about the time and the world we live in.’ He has made it seem true—or at least curiously and suspensefully possible—by the extraordinary skill with which he has wrung detail after detail out of a young woman who has lived with horror. A girl who has been the sole witness to her cousin’s unbelievably shocking death is brought into a ‘planned jungle’ of a New Orleans garden to confront a family that is intensely interested in having her deny the lurid tale she has told. A nun stands in rigid attendance; a doctor prepares a hypodermic to force the truth; greedy relatives beg her to recant in return for solid cash. Under the assorted, and thoroughly fascinating, pressures that are brought to bear, and under the intolerable, stammering strain of reliving her own memories, the girl slowly, painfully, hypnotically paints a concrete and blistering portrait of loneliness…of the sudden snapping of that spider’s web that is one man’s life, of ultimate panic and futile flight. The very reluctance with which the grim, hopeless narrative is unfolded binds us to it; Mr. Williams threads it out with a spare, sure, sharply vivid control of language…and the spell is cast."
Originally presented with
Something Unspoken under the collective title
Garden District.
“A haunting spell that is virtually hypnotic in its compelling power.” —New York Post.
“Startling proof of what a man can do with words…this brief, withering play is a superb achievement.” —The New York Times.
