' Small Craft Warnings '

           Tennessee Williams's play, "Small Craft Warnings," is a study of people surviving. A group of men and women- unlovely but modestly human- are around a bar. In some ways they are derelict people. They are drinking beer in this bar on the Southern California Coast, getting quietly drunk and slightly abusive and abrasive.  
           The characters are not remarkable, although not uninteresting. There is a lady beautician of uncertain age, but certain courage, who lives in her trailer with a male slob of a sex object who is content that his sexual prowess is a sure meal ticket. There is a drunken, discredited doctor who apparently lives on illegal abortions and drinks too much brandy; there is Violet, a simple sexual waif who cries too much, and Steve who weakly looks after her. Then there are a couple of homosexuals, the elder upset because the younger wants to show affection. 
           The bar is run by Monk- a solitary figure anxious to keep out of trouble, but decent enough and fair enough. Nothing much happens. All three of the couples split, but this is more like a statement of mood than the result of definite events. There is no motivation for the play apart from the characters themselves. 
           All the characters seem to be a species unto themselves. Williams is here describing the surviving losers of mankind, the people who pay their dues in suffering and float on life with a modicum of gallant misery. Williams is a writer of enormous compassion- it is a compassion that leads him at times into sentimentality, but it is also a compassion that that opens up doors into bleak and empty hearts. He is fundamentally a writer of poetic symbolism and mood.  At his best his plays can stain themselves into one' heart.
           "Small Craft Warnings" was the most successful play of Tennessee Williams. It was first presented in New York City on April 2,1972.