First Preview of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof- Page 3

[eperkins]

Posted: 12/23/12 at 2:04pm

johnmichael, I get what you are saying - the set does look beautiful. I just think it is too big, and the drama, particularly in the first and second acts, gets somewhat lost in it. I don't think the set in any way enhances the drama. At all. To each his own.

[greatwhiteway72]

Posted: 12/23/12 at 3:48pm

Wait when does Ben Walker get naked? and how much?

[eperkins]

Posted: 12/23/12 at 4:44pm

Ben gets naked in the first act when Maggie insists he change out of his towel. She convinces him to put on a pair of pajamas. He is facing upstage when he removes his towel and pulls up the pj bottoms. It's brief and is just his backside.

[After Eight]

Posted: 12/23/12 at 9:31pm

Re, the set.

The theatre is too big for the play; the stage is too big for the set; the set is too spread out to accommodate the stage.

[justoldbill]

Posted: 12/23/12 at 10:50pm

I predict the actor playing Skipper is a shoo-in for a Tony Award next spring! And why not? No one questions a stage filled with phantoms in FOLLIES. Shouldn't he be called Young Skipper?

Updated On: 12/23/12 at 10:50 PM

[Addison D.]

Posted: 12/23/12 at 11:12pm

I understand Skipper as very much the third person in Brick & Maggie's marriage--Brick is obsessed with his memory and Maggie is fighting with him for Brick's attention. I see where the idea of putting Skipper on-stage comes from, but I think it's a bad idea. As others have said quite eloquently already in this thread, it is the job of the actors to evoke Skipper and his importance and the job of the audience to understand how large he looms in the action.

[followspot]

Posted: 12/24/12 at 9:45am

"...and above all, the designer should...give the actors room to move about freely (to show their restlessness, their passion for breaking out), as if it were a set for a ballet." — Williams' CAT stage directions

Granted, Williams' wishes for CAT seemed to change annually, but I found this interesting in light of the current revival set, which is as close to the above as I've ever seen.

Updated On: 12/24/12 at 09:45 AM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 1:02am

This is a bitter take on this life-affirming and wonderful play. And sadly it doesn't work at all. Where is the love? Scarlett speeds through the first act like she was on benzadrine, with little modulation and a complete lack of likability. It's Brick who is supposed to find her annoying. Not us. Never has there been a Maggie with so little vulnerability. Is it really Ashford's intent to make Maggie as mendacious and soulless as Gooper and May? To keep not only Brick but the entire audience wondering if she really loves him? On top of which I couldn't hear half of what she was saying. I admire her work in film and loved her in A View From the Bridge so I was very surprised at how off her mark she is here. If you don't care about Maggie from the get go, there is nothing at stake and this becomes a very long evening.

Ghost Skipper, for reasons many have already stated, is atrocious but it was the least of my problems. Walker and Monk do the best they can under the circumstances. The best thing I can say about Hinds is that he isn't replicating his Political Animals character as Big Daddy (which was my fear); but he also mostly fails to connect with the love that has to be underneath all of Big Daddy's bluster (apart from with Brick).

The set is flouncy and pretty. The spaciousness provides the requisite mobility but the centrality of the bed was wearing (topped off with Skipper right behind it at curtain call - Jesus Christ!). And someone is going to have to explain to me the backdrop curtains behind the room curtains.

Do yourself a favor, stay home and watch Newman, Taylor and Ives.



Updated On: 12/27/12 at 01:02 AM

[vegas2]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 1:07am

That's a discouraging report.

I still have fond memories of the Liz Ashley revival. Maybe I should just hang onto them.

[followspot]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 9:54am

This production is using Williams' original script, in which Maggie is less sympathetic. As Williams told it, a sympathetic Maggie was imposed by Kazan in the original production, and then the film adaptation made her even more so. Especially because of the film, this is now what audiences expect. In the original script, although she laments having become so on her climb from poverty to that hot tin roof, Maggie as we meet her is a pretty soulless creature.

MARGARET: I do love you, Brick, I do!
BRICK: (smiling with charming sadness) Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?
[The Curtain Comes Down]
THE END

Such a wonderful closing paradox — is the tragedy that Maggie does love Brick, but he can no longer believe in anyone? or is the tragedy that Brick can see quite clearly that Maggie (unlike his perhaps fantasized memory of Skipper) has become part of — or has always been part of — the mendacity in which he feels he is drowning? Or is there a tragedy at all? Has, perhaps, every character gotten exactly what they deserve? (Mae is actually the most straight-up honest character in the play — a character turned into a cartoon in the film in order to make Maggie more sympathetic, when it's actually Maggie's fixated hatred of her that we should be questioning.)

For better or worse [and ghost Skipper aside], this production — in which we purposefully never have a firm grasp on who to believe or sympathize with — has very much followed Williams' original intentions.

Updated On: 12/27/12 at 09:54 AM

[susie777]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 10:54am

I totally agree with you. Richard Ashford decided to go with the original script. If you are going to compare it to a movie which by the way was shot many times and edited to the extreme it can never compare. To me Maggie was a gold digger who unfortunately married her football hero who didn't live up to her dreams but still has the chance to inherit all the money. I don't even think she was sympathetic in the movie. I just found it different. I know that many have no idea that Brick was sexually "confused" after watching the flick. They just think he's not into Maggie. It was of the times and these are new times. It will be difficult for viewers to compare them so I think the people who didn't see the movie may enjoy it best. I thought it was very good, albeit long but that's how it was written.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 10:57am

Point taken. Perhaps Kazan was right and Williams wrong. Perhaps earlier productions have successfully presented this paradox even while giving us an appealing Maggie. Is this appeal, this zest for life, this "life in her body," merely on the surface? Or is she a woman truly worthy of love? These questions have always been there. They can't help be there. Susie, you seem to offer proof of this by the fact that even in the film you saw in Taylor's Maggie an unsympathetic gold digger.

Or perhaps Williams was right and those questions need to be further emphasized. Perhaps previous productions - and above all the film - have gone too far in making us root for Maggie from the very start.

What I can say for sure is that in their zeal to overcompensate, Ashford and Johannsen have failed to successfully discover the marked ambiguity Williams demanded, which might have made for a remarkable interpretation. Ironically, they have left us not with a clearer paradox (the last beautiful line of the script notwithstanding) but instead with a clearer conclusion. And a dull and sour one.

By turning Maggie into a near shrew, making Brick's "arc" non-transformative and barely detectable, and leaving us without any evidence of love (however meretricious that evidence might ultimately prove), it is almost impossible to have any interest in what happens to these people during the play, let alone any paradoxical wonder at what will happen to them after the curtain falls.

A Brick who remains on the fence as to whether he can trust Maggie could be a very powerful thing. But a Brick confronted with a transparently unlovable wife is not.

Of course, the sexual candor of this script is a welcome advance. But as to this production, it's a case of two steps forward, eight steps back.















Updated On: 12/27/12 at 10:57 AM

[followspot]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 11:33am

A Brick who remains on the fence as to whether he can trust Maggie could be a very powerful thing. But a Brick confronted with a transparently unlovable wife is not.

I think that pretty much sums up Kazan's opinion during the play's debut, henrik, which resulted in Williams writing a new Act Three in which Maggie softens. Williams himself seemed to waffle back and forth in subsequent productions. As you can probably tell, I love the myriad ambiguities of the original script — how nothing we are told in this house of lies and delusions is necessarily to be trusted — but I also understand, as Williams apparently did, that audiences want at least a little something to grasp onto. It's a tough call, and a delicate balance that's difficult to pull off.

I do find the general preference for the Taylor/Newman film interesting in that it somewhat parallels the play's themes — the choice to idolize a false version of the original work because it aims to serve our every desire, over the real thing because it refuses to do the same.

Updated On: 12/27/12 at 11:33 AM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 12:11pm

Followspot, I actually love this version of the script. My concerns are with the way it's being interpreted. The combination of this text and a characterization that could keep us alert, challenged and marveling at the war within us between disgust and eroticism as these forces are confronted by truth - a contest unsettled at the final curtain, even jarringly so - could be electrifying.

For me this production fails because the balance is off. Disgust triumphs.

Kazan may have been right. But only as a director. Not as a playwright. He should have left that in Tennessee's capable hands and molded it into an interpretation based on the power of opposition between the words and our impressions of the people, leaving us just enough room to scruple whether our impressions are correct (the same damning uncertainty the characters have). Then there would have been a real gut-wrenching tug of war.

The movie doesn't nearly live up to this standard for its going in the other direction. The lens of course is midcentury Hollywood which always exacted a price for Williams. But when I watched it recently I still found it compelling and extremely well acted, miraculously serving up the guts of the play through its unfortunate shackles and censorship, far more successfully than this production, for all its much-appreciated freedom, does.

This discussion btw has been great. And I'm ready to modify my original objection to our not being sure that Maggie really loves Brick (which, I was expecting due to my affection for the movie). Keeping us guessing would be a great achievement. The problem is I wasn't kept guessing. I was convinced that Maggie lives for sex and financial security alone. No ambiguity there.







Updated On: 12/27/12 at 12:11 PM

[Addison D.]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 12:21pm

I always loved the Taylor/Newman film, but found the ending incredibly phony--Hollywood tried to wave an anti-gay wand over all the homo-erotic textual themes. After 106 minutes of Brick's struggling with his erotic longing for Skipper, he is suddenly overwhelmed with certainty and desire for Maggie? And Maggie the Cat yelping "Yes, SIR!!" to Brick? Please. Maggie might say "Sir" to Big Daddy, but to Brick?? Over her dead body.

The ambiguity of William's ending is so much more satisfying. So much more the logical "conclusion" of the night's events and the personalities involved.

I'm going tonight at 8--really looking forward to it.

[susie777]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 12:54pm

Did you not see Newman playing Newman vs Newman playing Brick? That is the problem I had with the movie. He was still just Newman- whom I love!! but still just Newman as he is pretty much in all movies. Suave, gorgeous and sexy. Still Newman.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 5:37pm

Wait so this IS the original script? NOT the final revision in the 70s Williams did which is what nearly every production now uses (the recent UK production a few months back, however, said they cherry picked from all three versions).

The Kazan script's differences are nearly all in the third act. The final approved Williams script, which has differences throughout is different from either Williams' original published script (with both third acts) or the original playing script. *confused*

Susie, to be fair Cat's huge success largely created the Newman movie star character--one that films used. So in many ways if you think it's Newman playing Newman that's because the film created that identity for him (Long Hot Summer was created for him to be a sorta ersatz-Williams film, even though it claimed to be based on Faulkner--who wasn't all that different thematically--that was rushed into production to compete with Cat, according to the book The Films of Tennessee Williams.)

Kazan even said one reason he approved of Newman in Sweet Bird is he thought he could play off of, and slightly subverse that image of him that was already so huge.

The film is a mess, saved by great performances, especially from the three, and classy direction. Though I think opening it up (the basement scene is so sentimental and non Williams) is a mistake, directorially Brooks is fine. it's his rewrite--the ending in particular but a TON of small moments--yes many to make Maggie more sympathetic--that ruin the theme of the piece. of course he thought he vastly improved on a messy play (as he felt with Sweet Bird of Youth). Brooks' moral code and stance (which is seen at its most ridiculous in Looking for Mr Goodbar) was *such* an ill fit to Williams.

[followspot]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 7:09pm

Eric, as far as I could tell at least the majority of this production's Act Three is the original. There could very well be some elements of other versions blended in.

[susie777]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 7:59pm

Eric I really didn't know that about Newman since I've seen so many films but never read the screen plays but if I think of all the Newman as I see Newman films they are not playing a sexually ambivalent character. He was a hunk for females - the sexiest of men and one most would want as a husband - using a bit of creative license here. God I swear when I say Newman I keep thinking of Seinfeld these days - NEWMAN.

Anyway I am going to go to IMDB now and see from where I created my Newman beauty. It wasn't from COHTR but of course that would depend on what film you saw first. Interesting and fun to think about.

I think Long Hot Summer really made him simmer. Wow I need to watch that again.

Updated On: 12/27/12 at 07:59 PM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/27/12 at 10:30pm

^I'm a little confused, Susie. Are you saying a sexually ambivalent and or ambiguous male character, can't be suave, sexy, gorgeous and very hunky for women? Or that in any event Brick shouldn't be?

If so you may want to check out Darwin Porter's biography of Paul Newman.


his secret life exposed

[MrJNLong]

Posted: 12/28/12 at 12:27am

So I saw this today and thought all 4 of the main actors were very strong.
Kind of hated the directing. Ashford should stick to musicals...
He doesn't seem able to trust the genius inherent in these non-musical scripts. They don't need tricks. Ghost Skipper made me so uncomfortable. Specifically in the scene where he sings the fight song. Oh my gosh, so awkward. I was closing my eyes to make it stop.
Also, as mentioned already in this thread, the storm effects in Act 3 came cross as very heavy-handed and superfluously distracting.
Bleah.
However, I was a lot more engaged by this production than the last one a couple years ago with James Earl Jones.
Much stronger throughout.
I have not seen Hinds in anything else, so I can't say if he was just playing the same character from his other work, but I thought he was exceptionally strong. Closely followed by Scarlett who really commanded my interest in the first act which is basically an hour-long mnologue for her. A couple of unclear transitions, but overall very strong communication and use of language.
I liked this production a lot...minus the amateurish directing "tricks" that reminded me of a directing student in his first undergrad project...
But he did get some good work out of those actors, so there's that...

[Addison D.]

Posted: 12/28/12 at 12:53am

Just home from tonight's show.

I just cannot understand how the ghost of Skipper has managed to remain part of this production. Worse--he's NOT a ghost. He flies through the tall French doors into a set rendered entirely in shades of gray, with Brick in White and Big Daddy in beige. Suddenly we are confronted with Skipper in blue jeans and football letterman's jacket. He's MORE real, MORE tangible than the "reality" that he is haunting. Very distracting, completely un-necessary--totally misguided.

Maggie establishes early on that you can "be young and poor or old with money, but never old and poor". She WAS young and poor and there is NO way she's going to be old and poor. Her motives are clear and unambiguous. She may, indeed, cling to a memory of the sex that she and Brick once had, but her survival instinct is what is driving her every action.

I also appreciated--more in this production than in others I have seen, and infinitely more than in the film--the relatively sympathetic portrayal of Mae & Goober--especially Goober. The symmetry between Mae and Maggie is clearly delineated they really are--as Brick says--like a pair of cats feuding over the estate. The kids are a caricature of an annoying brood, but Mae & Goober have been treated unfairly by Big Daddy and Big Mama, and their anger at Maggie's final lie is completely justified.

I thought Ms. Johansson gave a very credible performance, although she did seem to "swallow" some of her lines. It's a big house, but Emily Bergl's Mae was always clearly audible and her accent felt more organic than Maggie's.

And--yes; we get it. There's a storm coming. Enough with the rattling thunder. Oy...

Updated On: 12/28/12 at 12:53 AM

[susie777]

Posted: 12/28/12 at 11:09am

No I wasn't saying that at all! I guess I'm not much of a writer nor a great reviewer of broadway shows. I will take a look at the link you gave me.

BTW - regarding the ghost. I know a few people who went last night and they actually thought it was a young Brick and not the ghost - funny how other interpret things when they don't know the play or other little tidbits.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/28/12 at 11:24am

gotcha.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 12/28/12 at 11:38am

Skipper's final appearance comes as Big Mama is in her reverie about how graceful and beautiful young Brick was--"his shining hair" etc.--and for a moment I had a glimmer of hope that the ghost was, in fact, young Brick. It would still be a dreadful, melodramatic, ill-conceived notion, but at least it wouldn't be Skipper.

In Act II, however, the ghost very clearly pantomimes Skipper's end of the fatal phone call--looking at the receiver and dejectedly walking away from the phone. Unless we're meant to understand that Brick & Skipper have some sort of time-share on one ghost, I think we have to understand the Ghost to be Skipper.