
Orpheus Descending
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Tennessee Williams’s intense dramatic masterpiece 'Orpheus Descending' has graced the New York stage in various definitive classical revivals, most famously the grand-scale 1989 Broadway production mounted at the Neil Simon Theatre. Subtitled "A Battle of Angels," the sprawling Southern Gothic tragedy unfolds inside a claustrophobic, bigoted dry goods store in a provincial Mississippi town, tracking Lady Torrance, a trapped woman who launches a star-crossed romance with Val Xavier, a care-free, guitar-playing drifter. The 1989 revival achieved immense profile by starring silver-screen icon Vanessa Redgrave.

