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Camino Real (New Directions Paperbook) Paperback – October 17, 2008

by Tennessee Williams (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 25 ratings
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Now with a new introduction, the author's original Foreword and Afterword, the one-act play 10 Blocks on the Camino Real, plus an essay by noted Tennessee Williams scholar, Michael Paller.

In this phantasmagorical play, the Camino Real is a dead end, a police state in a vaguely Latin American country, and an inescapable condition. Characters from history and literature―Don Quixote, Casanova, Camille, Lord Byron―inhabit a place where corruption and indifference have immobilized and nearly destroyed the human spirit. Then, into this netherworld, the archetypal Kilroy arrives―a sailor and all-American guy with “a heart as big as the head of baby.” Celebrated American playwright John Guare has written an illuminative Introduction for this edition. Also included are Williams’ original Foreword and Afterword to the play, the one-act play Ten Blocks on the Camino Real, plus an essay by noted Tennessee Williams scholar Michael Paller.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    185 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    New Directions
  4. Publication date
    October 17, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.6 x 8.1 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0811218066
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0811218061
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Camino Real has a very small bull's eye. It's difficult to hit, but when you do, when you do - the world's a brand new place."
― John Guare

"There are people who think that Camino Real was Tennessee Williams' best play and I believe that they are right. It is a play torn out of a human soul."
― Clive Barnes, The New York Times

From the Back Cover

When first produced in 1953 Camino Real confounded critics and confused audiences. It was scarcely a success. Later productions in Los Angeles and New York indicated that the public had caught up with this work and could face its picture of our world--grim but not without magnificence.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Directions; Revised ed. edition (October 17, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 185 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0811218066
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0811218061
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.6 x 8.1 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 25 ratings

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Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

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Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of the 20th century's most superb writers, was also one of its most successful and prolific. His classic works include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, Camino Real, Sweet Bird of Youth, Night of the Iguana, Orpheus Descending, and The Rose Tattoo.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
25 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

George Schwimmer
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent - one of the great plays of the 20th century American theatre
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2023
I am 92 years old and have seen and read a lot of plays. I have a Ph.D. in theatre, directed forty plays, acted forty roles and was a college professor teaching acting, directing and playwriting. I have written three plays and ten screenplays, fifteen books. I saw the original production of CAMINO REAL in 1953. I was stunned. I didn't understand it then but felt it was one of the most magical and beautiful plays I have ever seen. Since then, I've come to understand it and write about it. It is one of the great plays of the American theatre, maybe of all Western theatre. And it is unique. No other American writer that I know of has attempted a symbolic play like this. I am presently working on a book that includes an analysis of the play, from top to bottom. If I could give CAMINO REAL ten stars, I would.
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Sidney Nicole Rogers
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2016
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Great quality
One person found this helpful
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Frank Cunat
5.0 out of 5 stars Abstract; symbolic; unlike any of Williams' other plays
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2000
Anyone expecting Camino Real to be anything like the other plays Tennessee Williams wrote during the same period, such as Summer and Smoke or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, will be puzzled. This is unlike anything else Williams wrote; it's nonlinear, overtly symbolic, lacking a conventional plot, and filled with images that don't make literal sense even as they speak directly to the subconscious. I think it could be Williams' most brilliant work, but others will prefer his more accessible plays and I don't dispute that. "Camino Real" is unusual and will not be for everyone.
In the play Williams deals with end-of-life issues in a very stark way; he also explores how a person's own fears can keep him or her from moving beyond the comfort of the familiar into unknown territory. I have to confess: I read the play after seeing it and being bowled over by the production (at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington), and the question may be whether those who haven't seen it will find it equally powerful just to read it. This is a case where I think they may; the plays' symbols and images come alive in the imagination. Even if you don't like it, you'll find it thoughtful and challenging.
27 people found this helpful
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Nerd606
4.0 out of 5 stars Camino Real
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2011
Verified Purchase
The book was in okay quality. After I opened and read the book, the covers started to remove themselves from the book. This might have just been the way the book was created so I am not angry.
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Yair Haklai
5.0 out of 5 stars A quote from editor's note
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2000
"It had its Broadway premiere on March 19,1953, at the Martin Beck Theatre. The production was directed by Elia Kazan, with the assitance of Anna Sokolow."
2 people found this helpful
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Nero
3.0 out of 5 stars For the serious fan of theater arts
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2014
Verified Purchase
No one can deny Tennessee Williams is an icon of the theater. His work provides the lexicon and a good bit of the foundation of modern theater, including the incorporation of multi-media on the stage. Volumes have been written. Camino Real has to be one of Williams darker works. It almost has an almost Sci-Fi aspect by incorporating various historical figures in what can be called a parallel universe for his setting. I have been told this play is rarely performed. I can understand. So Camino Real may or may not resonate with you. That does not mean it is not a great work of theater art, but it does not have the appeal of his better-known work. Obviously, this would be essential reading for the serious student of the theater. But be prepared for some heavy slogging. There is a tip of the hat to George Orwell's 1984 is implicit in this work.
One person found this helpful
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robin friedman
4.0 out of 5 stars Camino Real
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2014
Tennessee Williams 1953 play, "Camino Real" differed markedly from his early successful Broadway works, including "The Glass Menagerie", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Summer and Smoke", and "The Rose Tattoo". Williams wrote these works in a romantically realistic way with plots and development of character. "Camino Real" broke from this pattern in its expressivist, non-linear style. The play has a surreal feel with characters who drift in and out of its strange symbolic setting. Williams wrote and rewrote the play based upon an early effort, "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real". When "Camino Real" opened on Broadway under Elia Kazan's direction, it received mixed, predominantly negative reviews together with a great deal of controversy. The play closed after 60 performances. It was the first of Williams' Broadway failures. In its obscure style, the play foreshadows other works of late Williams, which largely failed, following "The Night of the Iguana
in 1961.

"Camino Real" is set in a small town presumably located in Mexico but a product of imagination. As described in the play, the town has an expensive section dominated by a fancy hotel, the Siete Mares, which borders on a skid row. The skid row includes a dreadful flophouse, a pawn shop,and a fortune-telling stall run by a Gypsy. Beyond the town stretches a mountain and a desert. In a Prologue to the play Don Quixote's sidekick Sancho Panza says of Camino Real that "the spring of humanity has gone dry in this place."

The play includes many characters, some of whom are historical, some are drawn from literary works, and some are contemporary. Characters wandering through Camino Real include Don Quixote, Sancho, Lord Byron, Casanova, Marguerite, Esmeralda, and more. The town also has its own mysterious permanent residents, including Gutman, the owner of the Siete Mares who also narrates the play, the owners of the pawn shop and flop houses, blind singers, aging prostitutes and the Streetsweepers, who serve as police and henchmen and discourage the expression of free thought or romance in the town. The major character in the play is Kilroy, 27, an American and former championship boxer on the skids who is cast into Camino Real with only memories of his past successes. Kilroy has been told he doesn't have long to live. He suffers from a bad heart which has expanded in his chest to the "size of the head of a baby."

The characters in "Camino Real" tell their stories and interact in strange impressionistic ways which owe as much to the setting and to symbols as to the script. The thread of Kilroy's story runs through the work. He is robbed and then humiliated when forced to work as a "patsy" in the Sieta Mares. When Esmeralda, a prostitute and the alleged daughter of the Gypsy, regains her virginity by the light of the full moon, as is her wont, she and Kilroy have a paid relationship which strangely blossoms into feeling on both sides. In a strange sequence, Kilroy loses his money and his golden gloves to the pawn shop and also loses his expanded golden heart. But the play suggests that Kilroy recovers something of his soul and spirit at the end.

"Camino Real" is an unabashedly romantic play. Its many characters are aged, dissilusioned and burned out and strive with varying degrees of success to regain their zest for life, creativity, and passion. As is often the case in Williams' plays, the characters tend to be the heart of the playwright writ large. The plays succeed to the extent that Williams is able to universalize his feelings. "Camino Real" concerns itself with artists, outcasts, and losers. The tone of the work reminded me of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" which would be written two years later. Indeed, "Camino Real" has been described as the first "bop" play. Here is one of the key monologues of the play spoken by the prostitute Esmeralda, Kilroy's lover.

" God bless all con men and hustlers and pitchmen who hawk their hearts on the street, all two-time losers who're likely to lose once more, the courtesan who made the mistake of love, the greatest of lovers crowned with the longest horns, the poet who wandered far from his heart's green country and possibly will and possibly won't be able to find his way back, look down with a smile tonight on the last cavaliers, the ones with the rusty armor and soiled white plumes, and visit with understanding and something that's almost tender those fading legends that come and go in this plaza like songs not clearly remembered, oh, sometime and somewhere, let there be something to mean the word honor again!"

Subsequent to its initial Broadway failure, there have been attempts over the years to revive "Camino Real". The work continues to provoke widely varying responses. In addition to its obscurity, the play is difficult to perform due to its length, its large cast, and its elaborate, costly setting. I saw the play when it was performed at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. some years ago and had difficulty with it. It is not hard to understand that the play would be hard to grasp by an unsuspecting audience watching it on the stage. I also had trouble with the play when I read and reread it. It is not an easy work to grasp and requires patience. If not one of Williams' more successful works, it is poetical and rewarding. John Lahr's biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh" discusses "Camino Real" in detail and encouraged me to revisit the play. In addition to this New Directions edition, "Camino Real" is available in the first of the two Library of America volumes devoted to the plays of Tennessee Williams.

Robin Friedman
2 people found this helpful
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Fantod
4.0 out of 5 stars A challenging work; but worth the effort
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2015
Simply put: this play is not easy to read. There are a whole bunch of characters and the set it not well described through stage directions, so it is difficult to figure out what is going on. The play is very dreamlike and absurd, making it a challenge to sit and read. It is also very long. However, the language and insights of the human race of Tennessee Williams as well as the extremely honestly drawn characters make this play worth the effort. I would, however, recommend reading some of his other plays before starting this one so you can get a feel of Williams's style.
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