A previously unpublished one-act melodrama by Williams—the first of his plays ever to be produced—opens the 2016 issue of the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, which includes an introduction by the play’s editor, Annette J. Saddik, and features a special cluster of essays and images devoted to film adaptations of Williams plays. Founded by Professor Robert Bray in 1998, the Review remains the only regularly published journal dedicated to the work and influence of this preeminent American playwright. The 2016 issue marks the 12th year of The Collection’s collaboration with Middle Tennessee State University and an international network of literature and film scholars.

The special section on film features the work of R. Barton Palmer, who offers a surprising new take on Williams’s underappreciated comedy, Period of Adjustment. Similarly revealing are Neil Sinyard’s insight into John Huston’s film adaptation of Night of the Iguana, Mary F. Brewer on the taming The Rose Tattoo suffered in moving from stage to film, Brenda Murphy on adaptations of Sweet Bird of Youth, John Sykes on the evolution of the character Val Xavier through various plays and media, and Tison Pugh’s exploration of camp and cannibalism in Suddenly, Last Summer. The issue’s array of color and black-and-white reproductions of posters, movie stills, and other film and play advertising includes images from THNOC’s extensive Fred J. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection.

Rounding out the 2016 volume are essays by M. Tyler Sasser, who unpacks an unpublished precursor to A Streetcar Named Desire to reveal new uses of Shakespeare in the play, and Bess Rowen, who tracks Williams’s stage directions as they subtly escape their boundaries.