Background
After winning critical and popular acclaim with his earlier plays, Williams wanted to experiment and expand his writing style. His later creations had more in common with playwrights Samuel Beckett and the emerging Harold Pinter, than with the name that Tennessee Williams had come to signify. Although the play is a marked departure from the naturalism of his classics, familiar themes permeate. Confinement due to mental illness, repression leading to social isolation and the tyranny and claustrophobia that comes from impinging on one another’s psychological and physical space, are all present in The Two-Character Play.
When the play premiered in its various forms, it was not well received by critics or audiences. At the time many audiences attended the theatre as a form of escapism. The Two-Character Play was the exact opposite. Clare and Felice, the actors, as well as the characters they play, cannot, no matter how hard they try to delude themselves, escape from the reality of their deteriorating mental states. Consequently, the viewers themselves are confronted with the darker truths of what it is to be human.
It was very experimental for its time. The language is heightened. There are slabs of verbosity juxtaposed with pauses and stunted sentences.
The Two-Character Play is partially autobiographical. The actor Clare and especially the character Clare, are loosely based on Williams’ sister Rose, and the actor Felice and the character Felice, on Williams himself. The "confining nature of human existence" was a major theme throughout his work and this play is seen to be his most personal interpretation.
It took Williams over ten years to write The Two-Character Play, longer than any other play, and illustrates an innovation in his writing style.
Read more about this topic: The Two-Character Play
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