When first produced in 1953 Camino Real confounded critics and confused audiences. It was scarcely a success. Later productions in Los Angeles and New York indicated that the public had caught up with this work and could face its picture of the world -- grim but not without magnificence.

Camino Real was originally the royal highway leading from Santa Fe to Chihuahua, Mexico. In Williams' play it is a terminal road, a dead end, a police state in a vaguely Latinate country from which there is no escape. Don Quixote dreams of Camino Real where a worn-out Casanova, a Camille living on memories, a Byron pitiful in his disillusioned pride and others less famous but as mercilessly treated by time are living out a hopeless existence among panders, prostitutes and inhuman police. Into this world comes Kilroy, the all-American kid, ubiquitous soldier of fortune, naive, with "a heart as big as the head of a baby." He is finally conned, or almost, into despairing subjection like the rest.

In the prologue Don Quixote arrives at the plaza and hears everyone whispering about their loneliness. He turns to the audience and says, "In a place where so many are lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone." And at the end when he and Kilroy attempt the road beyond, he calls back in exultation, "the violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.". These two speeches epitomize what Tennessee Williams said with such force.

"There are people who think that Camino Real was Tennessee Williams' best play and I believe that they are right. It is a play torn out of a human soul."
Clive Barns, The New York Times