title: The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays (New Directions Paperbook)
author:  Tennessee Williams 
description: <span>"These plays are a welcome addition to the Williams library, and this volume receives them beautifully, with a warm foreword by Terrence McNally, and a brief yet detailed scholarly appendix to each play by Thomas Keith."</span><br /> <span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>--Benjamin Morris, <i>Southern Quarterly</i></span><br /><br /><span>"<i>I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark on Sundays</i> (1973) is a mind-bending play-within-a-play that served as a study for the later <i>Vieux Carr</i>." <br /> </span><span></span><br /> <span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>--Garrett Eisler, <i>American Theatre Magazine</i></span><br /><br /><span>"These new "fantasies" (as Williams called them) span the arc of his</span><span> </span><span>long career, affording a view of his transformation from young neophyte finding his voice to</span><span> </span><span>master craftsman at the height of his powers."</span><br /> <span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span><span>--</span><span>Nick Coccoma<i>, Full Stop</i></span>
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  # THE MAGIC TOWER AND OTHER ONE-ACT PLAYS
  
  
  “Just as young painters make their stabs at impressionism and cubism, in his
  early one-acts Williams tried his hand with political satire, expressionism,
  social realism, and even drawing-room comedy.”
  
  
  —Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson
  
  
  “Within his early one-acts there are intriguing prototypes of characters and
  seeds of ideas Williams developed more fully in his later, larger dramas.”
  
  
  — _The_ _New York Times_
  
  
  “Williams was always confronting the future; a shaman with a typewriter, he
  dug into the darkest depths of the American psyche in search of dramatic
  truths.”
  
  
  —Randy Gener, _American Theater Magazine_
  
  
  “The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays. Some of which are like
  firecrackers in a rope.”
  
  
  —Tennessee Williams in a 1950 letter to Elia Kazan
  
  
  “Reading these plays of the very young Tennessee, then of the successful
  Tennessee Williams, and finally of the troubled man of the 1970s he had