The Rose Tattoo and Other Plays: "Camino Real","Orpheus Descending" (Penguin Modern Classics)

In these three exotic, steamy dramas Tennessee Williams portrays loss, faded lives and passionate love affairs. "The Rose Tattoo" is set in a bustling, Sicilian-American community, where newly widowed Serafina is paralysed by grief, until she has her romantic illusions about her dead husband shattered and rediscovers her true nature as a fiery prima donna, in a life-affirming celebration of love and sex. Tennessee Williams explores a new 'wild and unrestricted' theatrical form in the colourful tropical fantasy "Camino Real", while "Orpheus Descending", however, takes us into the dark territory of the Deep South: the corrupt hell of a small, brutal township, where a forbidden and tragic love affair sparks horrific violence.