Tennessee Williams

Theatre Festival

Blind Date & 27 Wagons Full Of Cotton

Does advertising a play as “rarely performed” excite you or raise your suspicions about the play’s entertainment value? I have to say that for me the latter is sometimes true. I’m likely to respond more positively if the play is the work of a respected playwright, either an early or ‘forgotten’ work for example. For this reason, I applaud Make&Bake Production’s choice of Blind Date by Horton Foote & 27 Wagons Full Of Cotton by Tennessee Williams, though Williams is certainly better known that the Pulitzer and Oscar Award winning Foote. Nonetheless, perhaps the full-house I was part of in Studio 3 at Riverside Studios on Friday night indicates how the London fringe is key to widening an audience’s experience of the works of respected dramatists.