by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 30, 2011
There is a delightful episode in Chris Phillips’s play Elysian Fields, which was presented at the Kraine Theatre during this year’s New York Fringe Festival, when the characters Maggie (“the cat”) and Skipper, from Tennessee Williams‘s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, are talking. Skipper is recounting to Maggie the early years of his friendship with her husband, Brick Pollitt, and making a veiled confession about the tenacity of his attachment to Brick. He describes a hot southern afternoon as he watches an old tabby cat patiently riding out the uncomfortable afternoon heat on a rooftop, awaiting a patch of shadow to alleviate its situation. He is struck by the cat’s stoic forbearance. He has it in mind to be just like that cat in life, patiently staying put, expectant that what he desires will one day fall to him. This image is more famously invoked by Maggie in Williams’s celebrated play, when following Skipper’s death, she pleads for her grieving husband’s attention and affection. It’s a clever piece of writing, respectfully returning us to the allusive power of Williams’s theatrical storytelling.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 8, 2011
Imagine if you could re-visit a tragedy and restore the hope; take away the shadows of doubt, the shudders of despair. Imagine if you could re-visit shabby rooms, where stale air does little but circulate the layers of dust and melancholy, and breath in fresh life imbued with optimism and energy.
Imagine if you could see a classic play such as Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie from a whole other persective, one of possibility, where the “bitter” of bitter-sweet is removed and all that is left is a revving of the heart at what is yet to come. The Pretty Trap currently playing at The Acorn Theatre (Theatre Row) does just that. Written by Williams as one of the earlier drafts of Menagerie it is a sparkling one-act starring Katharine Houghton as the matriarch Amanda Wingfield.
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by Diánna Martin on February 12, 2010
Kristen Vaughan as Zelda and Montgomery Sutton as Edouard
When Clothes for a Summer Hotel premiered in New York City in 1980, the world wasn’t quite able to wrap their mind around the play. It closed after 15 performances and was Tennessee Williams’ last Broadway production. With a myriad of plays that changed the face of modern theatre across the world, winning everything from a Pulitzer Prize (twice) to a Tony Award, one would think the man would have been given a little artistic license. Alas, no. People were not ready for this “Ghost Play”; and the fact that it’s been re-mounted in New York City only one other time since its original opening is a testament to the stigma surrounding it. It’s a play that is very tricky to pull off properly, and I’m still not sure if White Horse Theatre Company was able to do that.
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