Tonight is the final performance of two Tennessee Williams one-acts at The Tybee Theater Cafe, the area's newest venue for dramatic endeavors.
It's quite a satisfying space. Above Las Palmas on Butler Avenue, the cafe offers beer, wine, coffee drinks, and "light fare" for an hour preceding productions and then again at intermission.

The simple, casual venue was perfect for the Williams plays. "I Can't Imagine Tomorrow" featured the powerful acting of Lorrie Rumpel as a woman afraid of intimacy, afraid to express love, afraid of the future. She is, in many ways, a familiar Williams character -- a woman who's strong and weak

The ambitious play was hampered only by too-even pacing. There were some moments when the action could have moved faster, as well as some dramatic pauses that certainly could have been held longer.
The second half of the show, "A Perfect Analysis Given By a Parrot," was a completely different exercise, although still obviously Williams. In a short farce, two aging women -- hanging on to their party days -- take jabs at each other's appearance.

Beginning tomorrow night, and continuing on weekends through July, The Tybee Theater Cafe will present A. R. Gurney's perennially popular "Love Letters," a sort of epistolary play which tells the story of a lifelong romance through readings of letters.

The play has been performed all over the world -- and by hundreds of talented performers -- but the new cafe seems like as good a place to see it as any theater on Broadway or in the West End.

I really mean that, by the way.

"Love Letters" is a quiet, intimate play that doesn't require a complicated production. And the new cafe is a quiet, intimate space that seems an ideal fit for it.