The Past Never Fully Leaves the Room

Suddenly, Last Summer
Thesmophoria Presents
Side Door Stage, Lakewood Center for the Arts
Lake Oswego, Oregon
August 1, 2026 | 2pm

There was something fitting about seeing my first Tennessee Williams play in an intimate black-box theatre in suburban Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Presented by Thesmophoria Presents—a young Portland theatre company founded by two friends who met in children’s theatre—Suddenly, Last Summer unfolded less like a traditional mystery and more like the slow reconstruction of a memory. With the audience only a few feet from the actors, every silence, glance, and hesitation carried weight.

Before seeing the play, I expected Violet Venable to be little more than its villain. After all, the premise alone is startling: a wealthy aunt seeks to have her niece lobotomized to prevent her from revealing the truth about her son’s death.

The performance complicated that expectation.

Violet remained determined to silence Catherine, yet she proved far more complex than an antagonist. Confined to a wheelchair after a stroke and relying on a cane when she stood, Violet projected both physical fragility and unwavering authority. Her grief over Sebastian felt genuine, even as her refusal to accept Catherine’s account became increasingly troubling. Rather than asking me to sympathize with her actions, the play asked me to understand what she believed she was protecting.

Catherine became the emotional center of the production.

As Catherine recounted the events of the previous summer in Cabeza de Lobo, the play gradually shifted from recollection to revelation. Rather than leaving Sebastian entirely absent, the production kept his ghost onstage for much of the performance, dressed in a white suit. He remained silent in the present, finding his voice only within the memories of Violet and Catherine. It was an elegant theatrical choice. Through Violet’s memories, Sebastian appeared as a cultured poet and beloved son who wrote one poem a year. Through Catherine’s, that carefully preserved image slowly unraveled.

Rather than delivering its truths all at once, the play revealed them piece by piece: a revealing white swimsuit purchased for Catherine, Sebastian quietly taking pills, the relentless white heat of the beach, conversations about open and fenced beaches, and finally the horrifying pursuit that forever changed Catherine’s understanding of him. Each memory reshaped the audience’s perception of Sebastian until the portrait Violet cherished could no longer remain unquestioned.

One visual detail stayed with me throughout the afternoon: the recurring use of white.

Sebastian’s white suit.

Catherine’s nearly transparent white swimsuit.

Sister Felicity’s white habit.

Catherine’s description of the “white, hot sun.”

Instead of suggesting innocence, the color came to feel exposing—an unforgiving brightness under which uncomfortable truths could no longer remain hidden.

The production also paid careful attention to its transitions. During one scene change, Louis Armstrong’s St. James Infirmary drifted through the theatre, its mournful tone echoing the play’s preoccupation with death, memory, and the stories left behind. Like Sebastian’s silent presence onstage, it became another reminder that the past never fully leaves the room.

Leaving the theatre, I realized Suddenly, Last Summer is not simply about uncovering what happened to Sebastian Venable. It is about the fragile relationship between memory and truth. Two women remember the same man in profoundly different ways, and the play asks whether love can sometimes prevent us from seeing the people closest to us as they truly are.

It also struck me that this was an ideal production for Thesmophoria Presents. A company named after the ancient Greek women’s festival chose a play centered not on simple heroes and villains, but on women’s testimony, memory, grief, and power. Performed on Lakewood’s intimate Side Door Stage by a cast of local college and high school actors, it felt less like watching a museum piece and more like seeing a new generation discover why Tennessee Williams still matters.