Stars Honor Tennessee Williams at Guild Hall

Guild Hall's celebration of the legendary Tennessee Williams this past Friday night brought out celebrities and admirers alike to honor the late writer who would have been 100 this past March.

Producer of the show and Artistic Director at Guild Hall, James Lawson told Patch before the show that they had so much material of Williams life to work with that the script was over two hours long, and that they were literally backstage cutting the script down only minutes before the curtain opened.

American playwright Edward Albee and director Julian Schnabel came out for the evening's celebration and were apart of an audience who watched actors Eli Wallach, Mercedes Ruehl, Harris Yulin, Vincent Piazza, and Justine Lupe-Schomp perform Williams' plays, essays, and journal entries in scripted fashion for a two hour performance with no intermission.

The script was created by Yulin and Jack Canfora, and was organized in a fashion that flowed back and forth between plays and personal memoirs of Williams that told the story of his life from his childhood through his professional career.

Piazza, who currently stars as Charlie "Lucky" Lucaino on HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" said after the performance that he had never performed any of Williams work before, but had always loved his work. Piazza said he was honored to be asked to be part of such an event and that it was an amazing experience.

Wallach whose extensive film career began over 60 years ago performed in many of Williams' works throughout the years such as "The Rose Tattoo" in which he won a Tony award for, joined the actors during the "finale" portion of the show reading from "Mister Paradise" opposite Lupe-Schomp.

Wallach was also a long time friend of Willams, and performed the scripted readings with passion and conviction. At the end of the evenings performance Wallach motioned a stage crew member to raise the microphone. He looked at the audience, placed his hand over his heart, and simply said, "you are a pleasure."