Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending tells the story of the passion of two outcasts — Lady Torrance, a storekeeper’s wife and daughter of a murdered Sicilian bootlegger, and Val, a wandering guitar player — and their attempt to escape from a Southern Hell. Set in a small-town dry-goods store in the Deep South, Orpheus Descending is a toxic brew of racist violence, bigotry, misogyny, sexual passion, and longing for liberation.