Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in Never too Late to Read Classics

May 05, 2020 Sara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american, southern-lit, audio, borrowed-from-library, plays

This is a great play, but the audio version is not the way to enjoy it. I would have preferred to read it myself, but that option was not available and “listening” to a play seemed to make sense. Throughout the reading, I kept silently substituting the voices of Paul Newman, Liz Taylor and Burl Ives, and wanting to download the extraordinary movie and watch it instead.

This is a complex play about human emotions, the lies we tell ourselves and others, and how closely aligned love and hate can be, This is a great play, but the audio version is not the way to enjoy it. I would have preferred to read it myself, but that option was not available and “listening” to a play seemed to make sense. Throughout the reading, I kept silently substituting the voices of Paul Newman, Liz Taylor and Burl Ives, and wanting to download the extraordinary movie and watch it instead.

This is a complex play about human emotions, the lies we tell ourselves and others, and how closely aligned love and hate can be, like two heads on a Roman coin. For a character who has precious little dialogue, Brick Politt makes a big impression; but much is missing when you cannot see facial expressions and have to imagine movements...for much of what Brick tells us is told with his body and his face. Maggie the Cat is, on the other hand, a woman who expresses much of what she feels verbally, so she plays a bit better in audio alone.

No one brings a Southern household alive quite like Tennessee Williams. He gets to the edge beneath the Southern drawl and honey can drip from his women while they exude poison from their pores. Big men like Big Daddy were once common in Southern society and it almost feels a shame to say you probably will not find such men in the South today.

Williams tackles the serious issue of homosexuality in this classic, and does so in a way that tells you both where the public mores stood in the 1950s and foreshadows a surprisingly more tolerant view beneath the surface. I thought him pretty brave to take on the subject and particularly to have a man such as Big Daddy express an understanding of it. I'm sure it set much of his audience on their heals at the time.

One of the difficult questions left unanswered in the play, however, is attached to unrequited love. What are we guilty of when we turn our backs on someone who loves us in a way that we are unable to return? What should a person be willing to settle for if the desire dies or is killed by the guilt? Of course, we only have Brick’s word for his own feelings, and none of these characters would be above lying to one another or to themselves, but Brick and Maggie surely still have these questions to answer when the curtain descends.

One very interesting thing this audio included was the original ending of the play and the revised ending that Williams wrote after having some suggestions from Elia Kazan. I much preferred the second ending and admired Williams all the more because he was able to set aside his ego and recognize that Kazan’s suggestions were improvements.

Listening to this play has left me with a keen desire to see it on a stage. After all, plays are meant to be seen and heard, so when you have only listened you have only gotten half of what the playwright intended to give you. Of course, half of Tennessee Williams is worth more than all of most!

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