Tennessee Remembers TENNESSEE: Nashville's favorite Williams plays

Last Saturday, on March 26, lovers of theater and Southern literature commemorated the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Tennessee Williams, the Columbus, Mississippi-born playwright, whose canon of works include some of the world's best-known and most often performed plays. Even before Saturday dawned, however, fate kept the name of Tennessee Williams in the forefront of news and American pop culture last week, due to the death of Elizabeth Taylor, the film legend whose memorable turn as Maggie the Cat in the screen version of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof continues to captivate audiences. And on Thursday, March 24, the 56^th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof was marked by theater historians and the still-faithful fans of Williams' particular brand of onstage dramas. It was if Williams himself was scripting events of the past week.

Williams' plays, in which he created an accessible, largely Southern world peopled by characters both intriguing and unsettling, helped to elevate the genre of Southern Gothic dramas - richly textured and compellingly crafted - to theatrical preeminence. The timeless appeal of Williams' characters and the plays in which they are brought to life has been on prominent display among Nashville theater companies this year, with Studio Tenn's superbly acted and sumptuously mounted production of The Glass Menagerie (featuring the stellar performances of Nan Gurley, Eric Pasto-Crosby, Ellie Sikes and Brent Maddox) playing to capacity audiences, and ACT 1's effective and well-conceived staging of The Night of the Iguana (featuring the performances of Robyn Berg, Jack Chambers and Cinda McCain). Further south, in Murfreesboro, director George W. Manus Jr. helmed a new production of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton at his Out Front On Main theater.

In recognition of the centennial of Williams' birth, I conducted a very unscientific survey among Nashville theater folk to determine which of his plays are the most popular and the best loved. Perhaps surprisingly, the top vote-getters in our informal survey were A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof and Summer and Smoke, shows that have been given memorable (so memorable, in fact, that people continue to talk about them) productions in Music City in the last century. Members of the Nashville theaterati have definite ideas where Williams' plays are concerned.

Jake Speck, managing director of Studio Tenn, was among those people who claimed Summer and Smoke as his favorite, recalling a childhood experience that continues to influence him.

"It's the psychology of it that I love," Speck explains. "The cat and mouse game between John and Alma is fascinating. Their life philosophies could not be more opposite and yet they can't stay away from each other. She is spiritual, he is physical. My favorite scene is in the doctor's office when John's father is dying. He shows Alma a chart of the human anatomy and she can barely look at it. It is the climax of the play and the physical picture of their two souls. She cannot connect with her physical self, and he cannot grieve the loss of his father and connect with his spiritual self. It makes it all the more tragic the next time the two meet and have swapped places. John has decided to hang up his old ways and settle down while Alma is ready to give herself to him and his worldly ways."

"My love for the play began as an 11-year-old in Dallas, when I played the young John in the prologue," he remembers. "I was too young then to fully understand the play, but I knew I liked it. I saw the West End revival of Summer and Smoke in London in 2006. As a Southerner, I was very interested to see what a bunch of British actors would do with this play! Funny enough it was the single American in the cast who fell short for me. Unfortunately, he was playing John, which made most of the play not relaly work. I was shocked he got the part considering the biggest achievement on his resume (on either side of the pond) was his job as a series regular on The O.C. - not exactly Tennessee Williams.

"I was at an audition (a final callback - a situation in which one should be immensely prepared) with the same young actor in New York the following year when he turned to me and said, 'Dude, do you know what this movie is about?' I will give him that we were auditioning for Cry Baby which was based on a film, but come on! British film actress Rosamund Pike, on the other hand, was sensational as Alma and I can only imagine the depths she would have plumbed playing opposite a John of equal caliber!"

Actress/director Melissa Bedinger Hade who directed a critically acclaimed - and First Night Award-winning - production of Summer and Smoke chose it as her favorite, as did Christi Dortch, vice president of programming at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, and Carol Irvin, resident actress at Cumberland County Playhouse.

Ann Street-Kavanaugh, who has played Sister Woman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, chooses that show as her favorite. "I love the familial conflict - dysfunction and lying - tragic and, at times, funny. I also love the way that Tennessee Williams writes the Southern drawl into the language of his plays," she contends. "The lines wouldn't have the same impact said any other way. Even the title lets us know we're in for a hot, uncomfortable time. It is a play where you can truly lose yourself in the audacity, ugliness and humor that only family fighting can bring."

According to Angela Wibking Fox, "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, unique among Williams' major plays, boasts not one, not two, but three juicy roles for women. Once upon a time, I played Sister Woman to Sean O'Connell's lovely Maggie in a Circle Players production of Cat."

The character of Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt - played on Broadway by Barbara Bel Geddes, Kathleen Turner and Nashville's own Ashley Judd - provides a touchstone for many fans of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, compelling them to watch the play over and over.

Sean O'Connell, who played Maggie to Angela Fox's Sister Woman and who was a 2010 First Night honoree in recognition of her theatrical achievements, offers: "I think Williams said it best when he observed 'life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.' Cat On a Hot Tin Roof fills me with longing for places I've never known but recognized, and had history with, instantly. His work does that for the audience, but for the actor his plays are like full-length mirrors that allow us to step in, body and soul."

"Growing up Southern in all the traditional ways, Maggie represented my favorite aunt - trying as she may to break the chains of duty only to drown in her internal struggle to hear her own voice," suggests Tracey Barnes Hughes, who works in the development office at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse. "Tennessee Williams helped me to understand so many influential women of my childhood and see them for who they were; not just what they meant to me."

Heather Vaughn Alexander, whose performance as Ma Joad in Circle Players' The Grapes of Wrath, won critical acclaim and the Broadway World Nashville award for outstanding lead actress (non-professional), says, "I adore Maggie's spirit, her guile, her fierce determination to have what she feels she's been promised."

But the men in Cat may hold greater sway over Alexander's heart: "There is something especially heartrending for me about grown men crying. Southern men are so conditioned to hide any emotion except anger or laughter that I find tears in men much more moving than from women. Brick - gruff, tough, alcoholic - crying, trying to make Big Daddy realize that possessions don't equal love is my undoing every time I watch the movie."

The poetic lyricism of Williams' dialogue is what Daniel Sadler focuses on in his selection of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof: "'Silence about a thing just magnifies it.' Oh my god."

"Cat On a Hot Tin Roof has been my favorite play since I was forced to read it in high school English," says actor/director Robert Coles. "At the time, I thought it was a pretty racy choice for my private Christian high school, but I tried to read between the lines and see how the story relates to everyone. Be it a married couple, a person struggling with their sexuality, or a broken family relationship. Cat speaks to everyone on the deepest of levels."

Also casting votes for Cat were Dietz Osborne (who played Brick for Boiler Room Theatre), Patricia Rees Roblin and LaQuita James.

Cinda McCain, whose resume boasts at least three Tennessee Williams' plays (A Streetcar Named Desire, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and The Night of the Iguana) cast her ballot for Streetcar - her performance of Blanche DuBois (still talked about in Nashville theater circles) won her the First Night Award for outstanding lead actress in a play - and she's the first to admit that may be why it holds such a special place in her heart of hearts.

"It's probably directly related to the fact that Streetcar was my first experience with Tennessee Williams. I fell in love with the cadence of his language, and his uncanny ability to create situations that dig into the minds of the audience, as well as the performers," she muses. "Also, because he was a Southerner (as am I), I believe his interesting, complicated women characters enable me to feel that special connection to him. Blanche DuBois became my favorite character ever, and Streetcar was the play that caused me to jump at every opportunity to play another of his women since. Every one I've played turned out to be just as mind-opening, and personally stimulating as the one before."

Veteran actor Danny Proctor admits that his fondness for Streetcar might be due to his fondness for its setting. "Streetcar's steamy French Quarter setting, one of my favorite spots on this planet, peopled with so many wonderfully rich, conflicted and passionate characters - and set in the late 1940s to boot, one of my favorite eras - well, it just doesn't get any more irresistible for me. Williams, like many great writers, thrived in that one-of-a-kind setting."

Alan Lee gives his seal of approval to Streetcar, as well. "I was born in New Orleans...what are you gonna do? Though I do believe Cat On a Hot Tin Roof is right up there."

Actress Bonnie Keen, who will star as one of the Fanny Brices in Scott Logsdon's Keeping Scores concert version of Funny Girl at Boiler Room Theatre later this month, contends that it's Williams' personal battles that informed his work, making it all the more intriguing for audiences.

"Tennessee Williams battled so many personal demons, which is perhaps what makes his writing so achingly transparent. In Streetcar, Williams captures the dark spaces of human struggle 00 broken dreams, injustice, denial, posturing, overcoming, pretending...soul, weeping with such intense brilliance that it's always been my favorite of his works," she maintains. "The black-and-white film version with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh still draws me in like watching a car wreck. I should turn away, but cannot. Streetcar, like so many of Williams' masterpieces, leaves me feeling as if I know each character personally...I've met these people, I know them, I've seen them suffer andhit the wall, and in them I find pieces of my own heartbreaks."

Actress/singer Sharon Loveall picked The Glass Menagerie as her favorite - as did Mariah Parris (one of First Night's Most Promising Actors in 2010) and actor Lane Wright, who's been on practically every stage in town at one time or another - explaining that "The Glass Menagerie was probably the first real drama I ever saw on the stage, probably during college. The roller coaster ride of emotions that the characters went through upset me and thrilled me at the same time. I knew all of those glass figures had stories, were very real to Laura. I knew Tom had to get away (just like I couldn't wait to leave home for college) but I hated him for doing so. It made me realize life was going to be so much more complicated than I had ever imagined."

Menagerie is also the choice of longtime theater artist B.J. Rogers, who recalls, "The Glass Menagerie will always be first in my heart, after the Tennessee Repertory Theatre production with Mary Jane Harvill as Laura and Myke Miller as the Gentlemen Caller. Exquisite and unforgettable, even after all these years."

Denice Hicks, the artistic director of Nashville Shakespeare Festival and winner of the Broadway World Nashville award as outstanding leading actress (professional) for The Tempest, claims The Night of the Iguana and A Streetcar Named Desire as her choices for Tennessee's best.

"Playing Hannah to David Alford's Shannon in Iguana, under the direction of Rene Copeland, was a treasured experience for me," Hicks says. "The characters are all like fragile tips of icebergs, with the immense profundity looming just below the surface. And, as Stella [in Streetcar] had always been a dream role for me - I like the quiet ones - playing opposite Jeremy Childs with Nan Gurley as my sister will always keep Streetcar in the forefront of my favorites."

Finally, Scott Logsdon, the actor/director who helms the upcoming Keeping Scores concert series at Boiler Room Theatre in Franklin, offered up his favorite - You Touched Me, a little-known Williams play that featured Montgomery Clift during its Broadway run. "It's relatively unknown," he admits. "It is not as poetic as Streetcar or Cat, but I was lucky enough to work with Montgomery Clift's coach Mira Rostova on a monologue from it when I wanted to be an ACTOR - that monologue led to many callbacks and great interactions with people who wanted to know how on earth I had gotten such an obscure, lovely piece."

Picture (top to bottom): Ann Street Kavanaugh, Bonnie Keen and Denice Hicks