tells Val she looks forward to a new life because of this. Both walk about the newly decorated refreshment emporium adjoining the store, symbolizing the promise of a new start. As Val and Lady embrace, Val looks up to see that Jabe has torn a hole through his floor, and thus through the ceiling of the emporium, and is throwing coal oil into the place, setting it on fire while yelling out the upstairs window that Val has set the place on fire and is "robbing the place." Lady escapes through the door of the emporium and heads up the stairs towards Jabe's room yelling "No Jabe, no!" whereupon Jabe shoots Lady on the stairway. As Lady dies, the local sheriff and fire squad break through the front door, and seeing Val trying to get out of the emporium, open their water hoses full force in an ultimately successful attempt to push him back into the burning building, thus murdering him. Lady calls out for him while dying from her husband Jabe's gunshots. In the final scene, Carol walks in the remains of the burnt-out emporium while another transient looks about and discovers Val's snakeskin jacket. Carol trades a gold ring for the jacket and offers a soliloquy on "the fugitive kind." Adaptations In 1959, a screen adaptation starring Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani appeared under the title The Fugitive Kind; it was directed by Sidney Lumet, and flopped like the stage production. Orpheus Descending, a more faithful version – a film adaptation of the Peter Hall stage production – was released in 1990, starring Vanessa Redgrave. The play was also adapted as a two-act opera by Bruce Saylor and J.D. McClatchy in 1994. See also Southern Gothic References External links 1957 plays Plays by Tennessee Williams Plays set in the United States Southern United States in fiction American plays adapted into films Orpheus Plays adapted into operas New Directions Publishing books