It’s safe to assume that when Tennessee Williams put pen to paper for what would become Suddenly Last Summer, his intention was not to provoke chuckles.

But what might have shocked in the late 1950s (queerness, sexual exploitation, cannibalism) doesn’t necessarily pack the same punch in 2023. Except the cannibalism, maybe. That’s always going to be a showstopper.

Williams’s tale is entrancingly told here in a sparely elegant and well-acted production staged at the Ensemble in North Sydney but even so, it can’t quite get us to invest in story and character to that point where this hot-housed slab of southern gothic can be taken entirely seriously.

Belinda Giblin and Remy Hii in Suddenly Last Summer. Photo © Jaimi Joy

It’s 1936. We’re in the Garden district of New Orleans and grieving society figure Violet Venable (played here by Belinda Giblin) has invited neurosurgeon, Dr Cukrowicz (Remy Hii) into her home to discuss a matter of some delicacy. At stake is the memory and reputation of her late son, Sebastian, a dilettante poet and playboy who came to sticky end in a Spanish resort some two years earlier.

The only eyewitness to...