Williams has always been a tinkerer, right from his first commercial effort, Battle of Angels, which wound up 17 years later as Orpheus Descending. The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore was offered to the public in four versions, none of them successful. And, more recently, Two Character Play resurfaced as Out Cry.
In Cat, it was the third act that proved troublesome. In order to assure the play's production, Williams felt compelled to knuckle under to director Elia Kazan's desires that Big Daddy return on-stage in the last act, that Brick undergo a change of character as a result of Act II, and that Maggie become more sympathetic. Williams saw some merit only in the last, but went along with all three. In Kazan's production, Big Daddy came back to hear Maggie's false claim of pregnancy and to tell a smutty joke. This was a half-hearted compliance, but it did no real damage, though the arch of the play's structure had been prefectly satisfactory with Big Daddy serving solely as the keystone.
In the revised version, Brick seems at the very end to be headed for a reconciliation of sorts with Maggie, as he did not in the original script. This did do some damage, and Williams knew it. He was quite right in stating, "I don't believe that a conversation, however revelatory, ever effects so immediate a change in the heart or even conduct of a person in Brick's state of spiritual disrepair." When the play was published, Williams took care to include both versions of the third act.
But the problem continued to nag him. A year ago he tried out a new version at Stage West in West Springfield, Massachusetts, in which he mixed together parts of both third acts. I didn't see this production; but when the Theatre Company of Boston did the play at the Loeb Theatre two months ago, director David Wheeler did a bit of mixing of his own, and also substituted a single intermission just before the big confrontation instead of preserving the two in the text.
It seems to be substantially the Springfield version that the American Shakespeare Theatre is currently offering. Williams has been on hand here during the preparations and has made a few other minor changes. Today four-letter words may be spoken on stage as they could not on the Broadway of 1955; so "frig" has become "fuck" and "ruttin'" has become "fuckin'"--which everyone knew was intended all along.
Big Daddy does come back; the thunderstorm has been curtailed; Gooper reinstates his witticism about Big Mama's double chin; and Brick ends the play, as he originally did, by being more ambiguous and less conclusive. The text can now, I think, in its fourth version be considered final. If there seems to be, generally, too much repetition of words and phrases, that's just the result of (my) personal taste.
Williams ought to be pleased with the production that Michael Kahn has mounted for him. Kahn has operated with a sure hand. He has let all the humor come forward, and he has not been afraid to introduce quite a few lengthy pauses, all of which work tellingly. The first-act blocking and the byplay with the crutch escape the monotony that can easily beset the early portion of the play.
Elizabeth Ashley is a stunningly beautiful young Maggie, and this justifies all the primping and preening she does. Her Southern accent is not infallible, but she does serve well the lyrical aspects of her speech. She is not at home, however, in the profanity of a phrase like "goddam luck." I think she represses her fighting instinct too much in the first act, and one mutters, "At last!," when she really lets go in the third. I like the idea ok having her aim her archery bow at Mae's back. I did not care at all for Barbara Bel Geddes' Maggie on Broadway; Miss Ashley's here is as impressive as I have seen.
Keir Dullea's Brick is fine all the way. For a long time this is a thankless role: Brick has little chance to play; he functions more as a mannikin than as a man. But it takes considerable skill and attentiveness to convey Brick's inattentiveness convincingly, whether he is just lying down with closed eyes, gazing off into space, or whistling about the light of the silvery moon, quite oblivious of what Maggie is saying. Eventually he is goaded into action, and uses a chair as a circus lion-tamer does. In the great scene with Big Daddy, he performs with the right tempi and with shattering intensity. Still, it is a weakness of the script that Williams has not given us a fully-rounded portrait of Brick; we really know less about him than we do about his friend Skipper, whom we never see.
The memory of Big Daddy as played by Burl Ives both on Broadway and in the adulterated movie version is ineradicable, and we are not likely to see it bettered. Fred Gwynne, whose long-stage career since his undergraduate Harvard days has been largely devoted to comedy, here proves to be a surprisingly capable Big Daddy. He manages to encompass the role's vulgarity, shrewdness and compassion. Only when he gets to hollering at the end of the second act does he become unintelligible.
Kate Reid's Big Mama is hyperactive, rowdy, and gross. This is far different from Mildred Dunnock on Broadway, but it is closer to what Williams indicates in the text, where Big Mama is likened to a "Japanese wrestler." Miss Reid has a way of sitting with her legs apart in a most unladylike fashion, and vomits the word "crap" so as to make it seem the vilest word ever invented. Her characterization makes Big Mama and Big Daddy almost two of a kind--which is something of a novelty.
As the ever-pregnant Mae, Joan Pape has a more authentic accent than Maggie, but she is not nearly vicious and venomous enough. Charles Siebert's cigar-smoking Gooper is adequate. This couple is not up to the Madeleine Sherwood and Pat Hingle of 1955. Wyman Pendleton's Reverend Tooker is a deft sketch; and William Larsen has the unrewarding role of Doctor Baugh, who, like a messenger in Greek drama, is on hand merely as the bearer of bad tidings. The children and servants perform their bits admirably.
Jane Greenwood's costumes suit the time and place nicely. Maggie even puts on dress stockings with seams, which are all but impossible to find in these days of seamless hose. The lines require, however, that Brick wear a pair of white silk pajamas; what he wears sure isn't silk.
John Conklin has designed a handsome setting, all in off-white, just starting to show signs of deterioration. Three pairs of floor-length lace curtains catch the wisps of breeze and a variety of colors from the fireworks in the garden. In the center of the room, where it belongs as a major bone of contention, is a large double bed. I am reminded of the blooper committed by a TV announcer promoting the showing of the play's film version: "See Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman in a Cot on a Hot Tin Roof." No, it's got to be a double bed.