Only When I Think About It

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Southern delusion has always been a rich subject in the American theater. Tennessee Williams broke the mold with his insane Southern belles Blanche Dubois and Amanda Wingfield, women who refuse to let go of an imagined glory that probably never was. His genius was in showing us how women close to power never quite lose their need to pretend. Belle Rive was a place where Blanche Dubois lost her husband and her mind, but in her memory palace, it’s a pristine place of enchantment where nothing can go wrong. Like Scarlett O’Hara before her, she envisions the Old South not as a dead place lost to history, but somewhere she can still return when conditions are right. It’s like Oz: do dance, say some words, and a portal opens to bring you right back home.