Theatre - Tennessee Williams's deeply personal play about sex and guilt is scintillating, writes Michael Portillo Suddenly Last Summer Albery Theatre, London WC2

The Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant, enjoys pride of place in Sebastian's garden at his mother's grand home in the wealthy Garden District of New Orleans. In winter months the plant must be incubated, and Sebastian, when he was alive, went to great expense importing fruit flies to satisfy the appetite of his botanical rarity.

It turns out that Sebastian was as insatiable as his plant. He, too, thrived in warm climates, but fed not on little black flies but little black boys down in Cabeza de Lobo, one of those wretched resorts where rich and poor come together and the gringo's dollar can buy services from the local youths.

Tennessee Williams evidently sees sex as the means by which one person devours another. It is exploitative and destructive. Catharine Holly, Sebastian's cousin (played by Victoria Hamilton), takes it for granted that "we all use each other". She relives the night of her coming-out party, when a guest tricked her into his car and drove her out under the trees to rape her. On a trip to the Galapagos, Sebastian used to "look for God" in the massacre of newly hatched turtle chicks by flesh-eating birds. In Christopher Oram's excellent design, all the plants in Sebastian's garden could be flesh-eaters, with huge lascivious red blooms that seem capable of sucking blood.

Catharine is blamed for the rape. Sebastian then invites her to join him on his summer excursion, but what appears a good deed is merely further manipulation. Forcing her to wear a see-through swimsuit, he makes his cousin the bright flower that lures beach urchins into his trap.

Cabeza de Lobo proves to be Sebastian's last outing. His mother, Mrs Venable (Diana Rigg), sustains herself afterwards with the myth of Sebastian as a chaste and talented poet whose death was somehow Catharine's fault. The horror of his last moments in the backstreets of Cabeza de Lobo drives Catharine into a private clinic, where she "babbles" out a very different version of his character. Mrs Venable calls in Dr Cukrowicz, and bribes him to perform a lobotomy on Catharine that will either stop her babbling or stop people believing her.

The doctor (Mark Bazeley) likens a ward at the state asylum where he practises to a drum with the lights burning out. The director, Michael Grandage, sets the play inside a giant oil drum that opens with a terrifying cacophony of sound to reveal the garden within. That suggests that all the characters are incarcerated, but in truth only Catharine is at the mercy of her captors, fighting not to be lobotomised. It is difficult not to think of prisoners in Iraq as Catharine passively submits to every order, obediently stretching out her arm to receive yet another injection of mind-altering drugs, throwing herself upon the mercy of the doctor, offering her body to him, identifying her interrogator as the only source of mercy, as prisoners do when there is no hope of other justice.

Diana Rigg is formidable. Mrs Venable is rich and ruthless, but also scared. She accompanied Sebastian on all his previous summer trips. Somehow she, too, played the role of procurer before a stroke disfigured her. Her hatred of Catharine has its origins in jealousy.

Suddenly Last Summer is a short, one-act play that relies heavily on Catharine's soliloquy, which rises to a crescendo as she relives the ghastliness of Sebastian's final moments. The speech has to be wild and terrified, but intelligible. The Louisiana drawl must not falter, but the audience has to hear every word. Victoria Hamilton managed it pretty well. I could not catch every word, but her terror and despair were unforgettably real.

It is possible that it is all Catharine's hallucination. The play is beautifully ambiguous. No wonder Williams was exasperated by the Hollywood version that showed Sebastian running for his life, shattering the play's equivocalness.

Physically, Hamilton is perfect for the role. Such a good-looking girl would cause a sensation on the beach, but her Catharine never gets to use her appeal as a weapon. She is a tiny, fluttering victim trapped inside the drum, clinging to life, seeking out Dr Cukrowicz as an insect would fly towards a light that might bring it life or death.

Williams referred to this play as a catharsis, "the first work that reflected the emotional trauma, that of my life, very deeply". His elder sister Rose was always mentally ill, and suffered a total breakdown after she began to think that their father had made a sexual advance to her. Her parents had her lobotomised, and she spent the last 53 years of her life in institutions. Sebastian's appetites are evocative of Williams's homosexuality, about which he wrote openly later in his career.

In this disturbing play, guilt and self- justification seem to vie with paranoia and misanthropy. It makes for a great night at the theatre.

Booking on 0870 060 6621 until 31 July

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