World and family politics on Broadway

Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer, in revival by the Roundabout Theatre, still holds the potential to jolt your senses and take your breath away. The tortured tale begins in the 1930s tropical garden of Violet and Sebastian Venable, mother and son. It ends with his brutal murder at the hands of youths he has sexually exploited, which was witnessed by his beautiful young cousin, Catharine.

Carla Gugino, who portrays Catharine, successfully delivers on the role's intensity, but Blythe Danner, as Violet, struggles unconvincingly between faded enchantress and stricken matron, relying too heavily on the physical symptoms of her illness.

As the surgeon brought in by Violet to lobotomize Catharine to keep her quiet, actor Gale Harold seems a victim of his own mind-numbing experiments. He is all shiny surface, rather than serving as the critical fulcrum between truth and self-deception in the play.