CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
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| Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea. |
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these
days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE is pleased to provide instead
accounts of previous theatre seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for
theatre-hungry readers. If you'd like to know the background on how this
previously unpublished series came to be and what its relationship is to my
three The
Encyclopedia of the New York Stage volumes (covering every New York
play, musical, revue, and revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the
prefaces to any of the entries beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at
the end of the current entry.
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| Company of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. |
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF [Dramatic Revival]
A: Tennessee Williams; D: Michael Kahn; S: John Conklin; C: Jane Greenwood; L:
Marc B. Weiss; P: American National Theatre and Academy in the American
Shakespeare Theatre Production; T: ANTA Theatre; 9/24/74-2/8/75 (160)
A resoundingly
effective revival of Tennessee Williams’s 1955 drama “about greed, mendacity
frustration, and self-imposed isolation among the various members of a delta
family,” as John Beaufort described it. It moved to Broadway after its
successful summertime showing at the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in
Stratford, Connecticut.
Michael Kahn’s
staging was considered by some, like Walter Kerr, an improvement over Elia
Kazan’s original version, itself a Broadway landmark. Kerr was especially
interested in how much more clearly this version, through its casting of Keir
Dullea as Brick, made the character’s homosexual inclinations emerge than did
the Kazan mounting, with the more overtly macho Ben Gazzara in the role. Kahn’s
production was also notable for its seamless blending of the two third acts
Williams originally wrote, one for himself and one at Kazan’s urging. The 1955
production used the second but both were published with the script. Kahn’s
seemed to several critics, like Clive Barnes, “a definitive version of the
play.”
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| Kate Reid, Keir Dullea. |
The single most
remarked-on aspect, however, was Elizabeth Ashley’s Margaret a.k.a. Maggie the
Cat. The alluringly beautiful Ashley, returning to Broadway after a 10-year
absence, gave an absolutely dazzling enactment of the sizzling, sex and love
starved character. “Sensuous, withdrawn, composed and determined, Miss Ashley’s
Maggie vibrantly combines charm with grit. She can stand outside a conversation
like a cobra, or flutter like a bird. Splendid,” was how Barnes put it. “Miss
Ashley is hypnotic in every move,” declared Kerr. “Her Maggie the Cat is
sensuous, wily, febrile, gallant and scorchingly Southern,” applauded T.E.
Kalem.
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| Keir Dullea, Fred Gwynne. |
The reviews of
Fred Gwynne’s Big Daddy, Dullea’s Brick, and Kate Reid’s Big Mama were mixed—each
had their detractors and supporters. (Charles Siebert was Gooper, Joan Pape was
Mae, and Jeb Brown, now a New York theatre regular, made his debut as one of
the children.) The revival itself was liked immensely by almost all the
reviewers. Perhaps the loudest outright pan came from Martin Gottfried, who
demeaned the script as “deceitful,” a boring “three hour talkathon.” Of Ashley’s
work, he claimed she “occasionally reaches peaks of adequacy but generally
remains on the level of self-conscious cheesecake poses.” Nonetheless, she was
nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play.
Previous entries:
Abelard and
Heloise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
