First Run Theatre’s current offering is “Tenn.” This is the first full production of Aaron Scully’s play, but it received a reading in March 2025 during the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival’s Confluence New Play Festival.

Tennessee Williams is the title character and narrator in “Tenn.” In 1955, he is looking back on the creation of “The Glass Menagerie,” the play that put him on the map. In his opening remarks, he acknowledges and apologizes for leaving some people out of his narrative. The following 12 scenes portray events leading up the to the play’s Broadway premiere in 1955, but not in strict chronological order.

The characters who interact with Tenn are:

• Eddie Dowling, who has unshakable confidence in “The Glass Menagerie” even before it is finished. He sees it as vehicle for himself.
• Louis Singer, the Broadway investor whom Dowling offers extremely favorable financial terms if Singer agrees not to read the play in advance.
• Laurette Taylor, an esteemed actress who was thought to be past her prime when she was offered the part of Amanda Wingfield. Her alcoholism made her casting a gamble.
• Donald Windham, Tenn’s confidant and collaborator
• Audrey Wood, the playwrights’ agent. She seeks him out at the restaurant where he is a waiter after reading the script of his early play, “Battle of Angels.”

The script fleshes out the historical record without straying too far beyond it. Scully passed on opportunities to delve further into personal issues, such as the relationship between Tenn and Windham, and to discuss the positive qualities that made Taylor’s Amanda legendary.

I understand that compression is necessary in dramatizing historical events, but I was not persuaded by the timing of Scully’s version of Singer’s threat to cut the show’s Chicago run short.

A conceit of the script is that set pieces are added to the stage between episodes until the scene is set for the opening of “The Glass Menagerie.” I respect this concept, but at First Run, lengthy scene changes disrupt the dramatic flow.

First Run assembled a good cast including (in order of appearance) Matty Newlin as Tenn, Kyle Reeves as Donald Windham, Dorothy LaBounty as Laurette Taylor, Kevin Bailey as Eddie Dowling, Kelli Rao as Audrey Wood, Charles Huevelman as Louis Singer. The stagehands are Mike True, Phoebe Carlson, and Lilly Holland.

Julie George-Carlson directed. The designers include Mike Gasparich (lighting), Brad Slavik (set) Addie McGrath and Lili Holland (sound), Lauren Smith Beardon (costumes), and A. Merkt (props).

“Tenn” continues through Aug. 9 in the Kranzberg Black Box Theatre, 501 North Grand Avenue.

—Gerry Kowarsky

Photo by Brad Slavik
From the left, Kelli Rao as Audrey Wood, Kevin Bailey as Eddie Dowling, Matty Newlin as Tennessee Williams, and Charles Huevelman as Louis Singer.