Tea and Sympathy
Tea and Sympathy Author: Robert Anderson
First Performance: 1953, New York
Published: 1953
Genre: Drama in 3 acts
Setting: Boys' boarding school, New England, 1950s
Cast: 9m, 2f
Tom Lee is a sensitive 18-year-old schoolboy, whose manner and whose interest in art make his tough and sporty fellow scholars suspect him of homosexuality. Even Tom's father has his doubts, and his bullying housemaster Bill Reynolds is particularly cruel towards him. Only Bill's wife Laura, unhappy in her marriage and reminded by young Tom of her first husband who was killed in the war, shows any sympathy towards Tom. However, school rules permit her to dispense only ‘tea and sympathy’. Tom tries to lose his virginity to a local whore, but the episode ends in fiasco. Now convinced that he is ‘queer’, Tom tries to kill himself,...
[The entire page is 278 words long]
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