Cover of Orpheus Descending

Orpheus Descending

As the New York describes, the play tells " of a woman storekeeper and a handsome, guileless youth who comes in off the highway. A guitar-player, he is a rural Orpheus who descends to rescue his love not in Hades, precisely, but amid the intrigue, gossip and violence of a hot-tempered town ORPHEUS DESCENDING is one of Mr. Williams' pleasant plays, with characters determined to free themselves from corruption, with some sensitive philosophical comments in passing about the loneliness of the human being condemned in his world to solitary confinement for the whole of his life.

Read more

Mr. Williams is in a more humane state of mind than he has been in several years The introduction of the musical vagabond to the friendless woman who keeps the store, their humorous talk, their serious talk, the simplicity of their liaison after they have come to know each other all this Mr. Williams has written in his best style of mood, lyricism and tenderness."

Audience
adult
Length
short · 83 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Orpheus Descending? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Orpheus Descending. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Buried Child Shares plays, drama, play
  2. A Lie of the Mind Shares plays, drama, théâtre
  3. "Waiting for Lefty" and Other Plays Shares plays, drama, theatre
  4. Oleanna Shares plays, drama, play

“People who read Orpheus Descending tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Plaza Suite
  2. Seascape
  3. After the Fall
  4. Mourning Becomes Electra

“If you want more of the same (literary fiction about theatre), start with these.”

  1. The Chalk Garden
  2. Separate Tables
  3. A Memory of Two Mondays
  4. The Curious Savage

“If it was the plays that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. American Buffalo
  2. The Real Thing
  3. Doubt
  4. Crimes of the Heart

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement
  2. Diamond in the Rough: A Memoir
  3. Brushing Up The Years: A Cartoonist's History Of India, 1947 2004
  4. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning