Suddenly Last Summer

Scene One

In the wild garden of a Gothic New Orleans mansion, an aging southern widow, Mrs. Violet Venable, meets with Dr. Cukrowicz (who insists that she calls him Doctor Sugar for ease). Mrs. Venable is greatly distressed by the recent death of her son, Sebastian, while he traveled abroad with his cousin, Catharine Holly. It transpires that Mrs. Venable blames Catharine for Sebastian’s demise and she is horrified by the salacious stories she is telling about her son, which Mrs. Venable decrees to be lies and slander. She has made sure that Catharine has been admitted to a mental asylum but Mrs. Venable has invited the Doctor to her house for him to analyze Catherine’s state of mind. She is keen for him to perform his new method of surgically treating mental illness--a lobotomy--upon Catharine. Mrs. Venable describes the relationship she had with her son and describes their journeys together. She brings up an incident on the Encantadas, when they watched sea turtles hatch and race to