Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811
EAN num: 9780451125873
ISBN number: 0451125878
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 1
Printing Date: September 01, 1958
Publishing house: Signet
Sale Popularity Level: 3787613
Studio: Signet
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Product Description:
Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.
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Enough Mendacity To Sink A Ship
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955
The very first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry very first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
"Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" is a prime example of the contradiction that a radical commentator is placed in. The themes of duplicity, latent homosexuality, adultery and dysfunctional families topped off by more than enough mendacity to sink a ship are the stuff of social drama that NEED to be addressed as outcomes in the modern capitalist cultural sphere. However, in the end nothing really gets resolved truthfully here. Old 1950's-style All-American boy Brick, the `great white hope' of the family, may or may not sober up after the `lost' of his dear friend and fellow football player, Skipper. Saucy and sexy wife Maggie (the cat) may or may not really get pregnant by Brick and save the family heritage for him, or die trying. The only certainty, despite all that above-mentioned mendacity, is that Big Daddy is going to die and that 28,000 acres of the finest land in the Delta is going to need new management, either Brick, brother Goober (along with his scheming wife and their `lovely brood' of children) or some upstart. Off of these possible outcomes, however, I would not get too worked up about the final outcome.
In the movie version, done in the 1950's as well, which starred the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman as Brick and a fetching Elizabeth Taylour as Maggie the question of Brick's possible homosexual relationship with Skipper is far more muted than in the play. The implicit question seems to concern Brick's fading youth, his search for perfect meaning to life in Mississippi and that one's existential crisis can be eliminated by reliance on the bottle. The relationship between the dying Big Daddy and his ever suffering wife, Big Mama, is less dastardly than in the play as well. The scheming Goober and wife and family and those `lovely' children, however, run true to form. My sense of the movie, unlike the deeper issues of the play, is that a few therapy sessions would put old Brick back on the right track. The play was far less hopeful in that regard.
The Sweet Bird Of Youth, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959
The Fickle Bird Of Youth
The very first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry very first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions). ... Read More
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Like the other great American playwright Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams was not afraid of creating controversy through his work. Touching on themes of money, social status, and sexuality, Williams presents the dark side of each character. While it is hard to like any character, it is difficult not to be compelled by them.
Brick Pollitt is the favored son. Failing to recover from the death of his best friend and fight the demons that come with booze, he has no desire to gain the good graces of his dying father and inherit his wealth. His brother Gooper and his wife Mae, that "monster of fertility", are engaged in a competition for the father's favor. But even nearing a sixth child, they can not measure up to Brick. The climax comes as Big Daddy and Brick endeavor to reach the resolution that Brick has no desire to attain. Accusations of homosexuality and an inability to let go of his days as an athlete are among the reasons that Big Daddy suggests for Brick's inability to settle down and expand his family. Yet the resolution is not Brick's choice.
The explosion at the end is hardly as stinging as the process of getting to the conclusion. The ultimate question is whether the cat (Margaret) will choose to stay on the hot tin roof or seek refuge. The fast paced drama moves at an unflinching pace that will make readers anticipate the direction of each page. It may be difficult for some readers to disengage from this drama.
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I believe Tennesee Williams is the most versatile modern playwright who truly exemplifies the dysfuctionality of family morals. The Glass Menagerie, Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof are indeed his masterpieces. I found Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to be my most favorite. The characters were memorable (who can forget Margaret "aka Maggie The Cat," Brick, Big Daddy, and Big Mama?) and the lines truly classic ("What's the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can..."). Also, just like Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof touched upon subjects that were controversial then and just as controversial now (homosexuality, child molestation, prostitution, etc.), which makes Tenesee William's works highly relevent. His plays age well with time. Not to mention that there have also been INCREDIBLE movie adaptations of all of his famous plays. After you read Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, or Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie, watch the movie as well. There is no other modern playwright (except Oscar Wild and Anthony Wilson)whose plays will truly have a place in my heart for years to come.
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This play is the usual extreme histrionics that I have come to expect from Tennessee Williams. In this book set on a Southern Plantation we have the obligatory hysterical woman, an alcoholic and a homophobe. After a while one cannot help but get the impression that Mr. William's works all consisted of the same stock, cardboard characters and he only changed the settings and their names.I do give this book 5 stars because I have always liked Elizabeth Taylour who starred in the movie of this play although she is in fact a Real Life Serial Monogamist as the Sociologist would refer to her .
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Only Williams could have gotten away with naming his hero "Brick," as names were always his strong suit. He found comfort in names, and a wild exotic beauty, and even in his last faltering years was usually able to pull a final name out of his hat, something perfect. I remember seeing CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF on stage, with Elizabeth Ashley, some time before I read the play, so naturally my experience of the text is colored by Ashley's sizzling interpretation of Maggie the Cat, all hisses and feral screams. She was so strong I can barely remember who played Brick or Big Daddy in that production. I think it was Keir Dullea from DAVID AND LISA. Maybe Big Daddy was the man from the MUNSTERS TV show. What we, the audience, cared about was if Maggie was going to get her wway and triumph over all the mendacity and the "no neck monsters" that were swarming the plantation.
Maggie gets angry, but mostly we value her for her tenderness. Even when she knows her husband has lost his heart over a long-gone teammate, and that he's probably gay, she never gives up the ship. She knows that without her in his corner 100 per cent, he'll give up, drown in his own sorrows. He needs her to kick his ass and bring him back to the land of the awake. She wasn't going to be an enabler, she would always discourage him from drinking from the time he got up in the morning till he passed out at night, his crutches tangled up in his boxer shorts. For Brick, drinking is a way out of his tortured memories of Skipper, the boy he loved in high school and college. Taking a drink is "like a switch, clickin' off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on and all of a sudden, there's peace." Secretly the family has a plan to ship his butt off to Rainbow Hill, sort of a Betty Ford Clinic without the mercy.
We love Maggie trying to semaphor the truth into his thick skull by screaming, "Skipper is dead but I'm alive! Maggie the Cat is alive!"
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