The story takes place in a fashionable flat in Saint Louis. Lily is a young intellectual (and temperamental) heavily smoking woman who just finished school. Her philistine widow mother, Mrs. Yorke, is an intense critic of her hopeless daughter who refuses to marry and does not like to crochet like all the other girls at the tea parties. When the mother goes to get her hair done, a heavily smoking Lily wanders around in the many rooms of the flat whilst she reveals the story about her late father whom the mother suffocated mentally. In the end, she sets the flat on fire. This is a frightening play about suppression and alienation.
ONE ACTS BY TENN is a series of one act plays by Tennessee Williams, written in the thirties and the forties. They can be performed separately or with others. Regarding USA productions the performance has been given the title 5 BY TENN or 8 BY TENN.
