Some Problems for the Moose Lodge

by Tennessee Williams

DARK COMEDY
Williams’ satirical wit is on full display in the haunted home of a flailing Mississippi family, where Gothic comedy is shadowed by hysteria -- and hysterical laughter.
directed by Rory Pelsue
THE COLLECTIVE NY

New York, NY

Cornelius and Bella McCorkle come home to Pascagoula after the funeral of their fun-loving gay son. To Bella’s delight and Cornelius’s derision, they discover their other son has moved into their house for a visit with his fiancée: a pregnant holy roller who speaks in tongues.

The McCorkle family tradition is to ward off disaster with denial. Attacks of guilt, fear, disappointment, hemorrhoids, over-eager police officers, and an arriving ambulance are countered by happy memories, the old boy network, and a peanut butter sandwich.

Moose Lodge is paired with Steps Must Be Gentle, Williams’ fantasia about the poet Hart Crane. Both plays are directed by Rory Pelsue and produced by The Collective NY, New York’s ensemble of professional theater artists dedicated to the belief that the current conditions of commercialized theatre necessitate collective action.

About The Plays

This will be the first production of Some Problems for the Moose Lodge since its 1980 premiere, part of a trilogy titled Tennessee Laughs! at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. The one-act Moose Lodge grew into Williams’ last completed play, A House Not Meant to Stand, but Moose Lodge stands by itself as a giddy vision of a world hanging on by a whim and a prayer.

Steps Must Be Gentle is Williams’ fantasia about the poet Hart Crane, who committed suicide by jumping off a ship into the Gulf of Mexico. In Steps Must Be Gentle, Williams pictures Hart Crane at peace on the bottom of the sea, until his mother dies and tracks him down to straighten him out.