CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – review

***/5 /www.theguardian.com

Almost purr-fect … Scarlett Johansson as Maggie the Cat in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. Photograph: Joan Marcus/AP/Boneau/Bryan-Brown

Does Broadway need another revival of Tennessee Williams's Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, its third in three years? Perhaps not. But when an actor such as Scarlett Johansson gets her claws into a part like Maggie, the Cat gets another life. Sinuous in a beige slip, with head swathed in a marmalade wig, eyes opulently lined in black, Johansson should get plenty of audience members purring. But despite these charms, director Rob Ashford's production is little more than a star vehicle, erratically driven.

With curtains adorned with a pattern of lowering branches and a burst of ominous strings as the house lights dim, the evening promises southern gothic, but devolves into a mix of naturalism and farce. (For some reason Ashford insists on having characters chase each other around and around the bed.) As in the recent revival of Glengarry Glen Ross with Al Pacino, the actors all seem to be inhabiting different plays, to say nothing of different regions. Some actors luxuriate in the Mississippi vowels while others, such as Debra Monk's Big Mama, decline to offer any discernible accent at all.

The play is set, famously, during a muggy evening on the Pollitt plantation in the Mississippi Delta. The occasion is the 65th birthday of Big Daddy (Ciarán Hinds) and while cancer means he likely won't see another, the family has gathered to celebrate. The elder son Gooper, his grasping wife Mae and their five children (whom Maggie refers to memorably as "no-neck monsters", though Ashford has cast rather slim tots) do everything but wrest the plantation deed from Daddy's dying hand. Meanwhile, younger song Brick (Benjamin Walker) consistently ignores the festivities in favour of the depths of a whiskey bottle, even as his wife Maggie (Johansson) urges him to take an interest in his inheritance.

Brick refuses to sleep with Maggie, believing her to be partially responsible for the death of his best friend, Skipper, who may have loved Brick in a more than friendly way. Resisting the charms of Johansson should indicate a bravura performance, but Walker, a rambunctious delight in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, seems oddly passive here. Johansson, on the other hand, is very active and sometimes very good. She looks terrific (if there were an award for foundation garments hers would take the trophy) and she has emphasised her natural huskiness to deliver lines in a seductive growl. As in her Broadway debut in A View from the Bridge, she likes to let the audience know how hard she's working and some scenes seem more studied than lived, though she has a very fine last act. But all her feline grace and neat red claws still can't make this revival land on its feet.

 

Scarlett Johansson in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Richard Rodgers Theatre, New York, review

Audiences will not be disappointed by Scarlett Johansson's return to the stage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, writes Mark Hughes.

****/5 By Mark Hughes /GMT 18 Jan 2013 / www.telegraph.co.uk

Scarlett Johansson’s performance as Maggie, the lead in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, marks her return to the theatre following her widely acclaimed Broadway debut in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge – and she could barely have chosen a more challenging role. The first half-hour of the three-hour play is almost solely reliant on long monologues from Maggie, with only the briefest of interruptions from her husband Brick (Benjamin Walker).

What’s more, comparisons with the most famous incumbent of that character are inevitable. Like Elizabeth Taylor, Johansson is a former child actress who tentatively moved into adult roles before taking the big screen by storm and becoming one of Hollywood’s leading sex symbols. And like Taylor, who was 25 when she took the role of Maggie opposite Paul Newman in the 1958 film, Johansson (28) delivered a charismatic, if at times slightly breathless, performance.

Affecting a very passable Southern accent, her Maggie flits between rage at the fact her husband no longer seems even to like her, and sorrow that she cannot force him to. In between, there are moments of genuine comedy that drew loud laughs and applause. One wonders, though, how her vocal cords will hold up during the 15-week run – at times, she seemed on the verge of losing her famously husky voice.

Benjamin Walker and Scarlett Johansson in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. ©2012 Joan Marcus

All the play’s action is set in one room: Maggie and Brick’s bedroom. Throughout the three acts, various family members enter, to discuss the play’s intertwined plot threads, including the fact that Brick’s father, Big Daddy, is dying of cancer but does not yet know it, and Brick’s battle with alcoholism, brought on by feelings of guilt over the death of his best friend Skipper. Vital, too, is Brick’s anger towards his wife Maggie.

Mercifully for Johansson, Maggie is barely in the second act, even if the play is slightly less engaging for her absence. Instead it features Brick and his father, engaged in a lengthy discussion, which at times leaves the drama feeling slightly one-note. Although this is compounded by the unchanging set and costumes, the introduction of Irish actor Ciaran Hinds – giving a colossal performance as Big Daddy – certainly helps spice thing up.

Walker is the one actor who remains on stage at all times – albeit often in silence – and his performance as a weary rather than outright disdainful Brick grows more powerful as the play goes on. Other cast members cast give strong showings. Debra Monk is moving and amusing as Big Mama, while the English actress Emily Bergl is fabulously funny as the jealous and bitchy sister-in-law, Mae – there is no sense of the show hanging entirely upon the Hollywood star at the top of the bill.

Even so, it is Johansson – who spends much of the first act of the play dressed in nothing but a slip – whom the audiences will flock to see. And they will not be disappointed.

 

 

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Theater Review

1/17/2013 by David Rooney / www.hollywoodreporter.com

Scarlett Johansson, Ciaran Hinds, Benjamin Walker and Debra Monk star in Broadway's third revival in a decade of Tennessee Williams' 1955 drama of greed, mendacity and death.

NEW YORK – Somebody spayed the cat. And it wasn’t the hardworking main attraction Scarlett Johansson, who plays Tennessee Williams’ tenacious feline title character in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The star and her similarly marooned fellow castmembers are all at the mercy of Rob Ashford, a director out of his depth and reaching for any floatation device he can grab in this sinking Broadway revival, which manages to be both thunderously emphatic and curiously flat.

Choreographer-turned-director Ashford has staged Broadway revivals of the musicals Promises, Promises and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. His forays into directing drama have been in acclaimed London productions of Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (with Rachel Weisz) and Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie (with Jude Law). But, the reception for those outings notwithstanding, there’s little evidence here that he knows what he’s doing.

Paradoxically, for someone whose theater experience is rooted in dance, Ashford displays a tin ear for the vigorous musicality of Williams’ flavorful dialogue. The actors are directed to shout or mumble, with the production’s cluttered audio wallpaper forcing them to compete against busy sound and music cues. As a result, the humor often doesn’t land and the dramatic peaks tend to fly by unnoticed.

Lest the subtext should breeze over someone’s head, every bit of key dialogue is underlined with a sonic mallet. A mention of glory days on the football field prompts the eerie echo of a cheering crowd. Recollections of more carefree times are underscored with a tinkling "By the Light of the Silvery Moon." Talk of a fateful phone call triggers a ghostly ringing. And when death comes a calling, the field hands are at the ready offstage to spark up a mournful spiritual. The play’s birthday fireworks are used with the bluntness of punctuation, and as for the Act III storm … whoa there! Usually when the heavens rumble and the gauze curtains billow like this, some undead cad is chomping on the neck of a virgin.

According to reports out of previews, Ashford experimented with having a spectral version of Skipper prowl the stage. That device imposed a vivid embodiment of the football buddy whose death haunts former golden boy Brick Pollitt (Benjamin Walker), forcing him to seek refuge in vast quantities of bourbon. Thankfully, the idea was abandoned, though there are few other signs of restraint. It’s clear that Ashford doesn’t trust the play to work without a lot of intrusive directorial flourishes.

Even the set by gifted designer Christopher Oram is heavy-handed, if quite strikingly so in its washed-out Southern decadence. With a tonal palette ranging from beige to gray, this is a cavernous mausoleum, drenched in Neil Austin’s sepulchral lighting and ominous shadows, which pour in through those aforementioned drapes. Got it. We’re in a place of death. And in case the sexual wasteland that defines the union of Maggie (Johansson) and Brick is unclear, their loveless marital bed stands like a monolith, smack in the middle of the stage. Poor Walker is forced to hobble around it on Brick’s broken ankle like a lame greyhound looping the track

For an actor whose experience is primarily in film, Johansson has innate stage presence, as she showed in her Tony-winning turn opposite Liev Schreiber in A View From the Bridge in 2010. She has no trouble playing sultry and looks alluring in Maggie’s iconic slip. Johansson has made some bold choices in the demanding role, aging herself with a coarsened, growling voice, knowing humor and a refusal to soften the character’s abrasive edge. There’s no kitten in her cat. But keeping Maggie’s vulnerability hidden until the final act seems a mistake. Without the underlying wounds she’s just a shrew.

Many actresses in the part use defiant pride as a means of backing up the massive lie that Maggie tells to secure Brick’s claim on his dying father’s estate. Instead Johansson trembles with the terror of exposure. But there’s otherwise insufficient delicacy in her characterization, which overall is the problem with Ashford’s production.

The first act in particular lumbers along, with Walker mostly seeming as uninterested as Brick is in the prolonged assault of seduction and supplication launched by Maggie, the wife he can no longer stand to see or hear. He fires up only momentarily, and then more consistently in Act II. That’s when Brick is forced into a confrontation with his father Big Daddy (Ciaran Hinds), the blowhard Mississippi Delta plantation owner, kept in the dark about his cancer diagnosis. Walker is at his best showing Brick’s furious defensiveness whenever his wife or father picks at the open wound of Skipper’s death and the ambiguities of their relationship.

There are real sparks in the father-son faceoff because Hinds gets the determination and frustration of Big Daddy, a crude man accustomed to buying or bullying his way out of any situation. It’s a cruel irony that the exception is self-destructive Brick, the only member of the family he truly loves. Ashford and his actors do right by this sometimes-neglected aspect of the play, forging a kinship that exists between the two characters contrary to all logic.

Hinds conveys the hardness of Big Daddy, especially in his cold dismissal of his devoted wife Big Mama (Debra Monk). But in a role that can be shattering, Monk’s performance gets lost. Her moments of hurt, bewilderment and anger mostly dissolve in the stormy air or are steamrolled by Ashford’s bag of tricks. As Brick’s vulture-like brother and sister-in-law, Gooper and Mae, Michael Park and Emily Bergl hit the required notes of unctuousness and avarice. But here, too, some of the caustic wit that runs through this play about greed, lies and death is missing, along with the pathos.

Williams’ 1955 Pulitzer winner has not exactly been neglected on Broadway, this being its third revival in a decade. It’s arguable whether this staging hits fewer or more of the right notes than the handsome but unbalanced 2003 production, in which Ashley Judd and Jason Patric were seriously outclassed by Ned Beatty and Margo Martindale in the senior roles. Or the 2008 all-black staging, where Terrence Howard, Anika Noni Rose, James Earl Jonesand Phylicia Rashad crackled with life despite the inconsistencies of Debbie Allen’s direction. For an American classic, this is a surprisingly tough work to conquer.

Either way, it’s sad to think that audiences experiencing the play for the first time in this laborious version might be inclined to question its stature.

Venue: Richard Rodgers Theatre, New York (runs through March 30)
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Ciaran Hinds, Benjamin Walker, Debra Monk, Emily Bergl, Michael Parks, Vin Knight, Brian Reddy, Jordan Dean, Tanya Birl, Will Cobbs, Lance Roberts, Cherene Snow, Laurel Griggs, Victoria Leigh, Charlotte Rose Masi, George Porteous, Noah Unger
Director: Rob Ashford
Playwright: Tennessee Williams
Set designer: Christopher Oram
Costume designer: Julie Weiss
Lighting designer: Neil Austin
Music & sound designer: Adam Cork
Presented by Stuart Thompson, Jon B. Platt, The Araca Group, Roger Berlind, Scott M. Delman, Roy Furman, Ruth Hendel, Carl Moellenberg, Scott & Brian Zeilinger, Nederlander Presentations, Tulchin/Bartner Productions, Scott Rudin

More Background On CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com

 

CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com is associated with the 2013 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a star-driven production headlined by Scarlett Johansson as Maggie and Benjamin Walker as Brick. Presented at New York City's Richard Rodgers Theatre, the limited engagement brought one of the most famous American dramas of the 20th century back to Broadway with a prominent cast, an experienced creative team and considerable media attention.

The website functioned as the online home for the production, providing theatergoers with information about the play, its cast and creative personnel, press coverage and critical reaction. Today, its greatest interest is historical. It preserves a window into the way a major Broadway production was promoted during the early 2010s, when official show websites had become an important bridge between traditional theatrical advertising and online ticket marketing.

The revival began previews on December 18, 2012, officially opened January 17, 2013, and concluded its scheduled limited engagement on March 30. It played 34 previews and 84 regular performances.

Although the production received sharply divided reviews, it attracted substantial attention because Johansson was returning to Broadway after her Tony Award-winning performance in A View From the Bridge. Her celebrity helped transform a revival of a nearly 60-year-old play into one of the more visible theatrical events of the 2012-2013 Broadway season.

The Play Behind the Website

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was written by Tennessee Williams and first produced on Broadway in 1955. Set on a wealthy Mississippi Delta plantation, the drama revolves around the Pollitt family as it gathers for the 65th birthday of its patriarch, Big Daddy.

Beneath the birthday celebration is a crisis. Big Daddy is gravely ill, although he has initially been led to believe otherwise. His impending death raises questions about inheritance, family loyalty and control of his estate.

At the center of the drama are Big Daddy's younger son, Brick, and Brick's wife, Maggie. Brick is a former athlete who has withdrawn emotionally from his wife and increasingly depends on alcohol. He remains haunted by the death of his close friend Skipper and by questions surrounding the nature of their relationship. Maggie, meanwhile, desperately attempts to save both her marriage and the couple's position within the Pollitt family.

Williams uses this family confrontation to explore subjects that were unusually provocative when the play premiered: sexual repression, homosexuality and its social stigma, alcoholism, infertility, greed, mortality, marital alienation and the lies people tell themselves and one another.

One word repeatedly becomes central to the drama: "mendacity." The inability—or unwillingness—of the characters to confront uncomfortable truths is one of the reasons the play has remained relevant through generations of productions.

Tennessee Williams and an American Theatrical Landmark

The cultural importance of the 2013 production cannot be understood without considering the stature of the play itself.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play. Its original Broadway production opened at the Morosco Theatre on March 24, 1955, and ran for 694 performances.

The original production was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie, Ben Gazzara as Brick and Burl Ives as Big Daddy. Kazan's involvement was particularly important because the director and Williams wrestled with aspects of the play's final act, contributing to a long-running scholarly and theatrical discussion about different versions of the ending.

The play quickly became part of the American theatrical canon.

Its fame expanded dramatically with the 1958 film starring Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie, Paul Newman as Brick and Burl Ives recreating his role as Big Daddy. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and acting nominations for Taylor and Newman.

Consequently, every major revival confronts an unusual challenge: audiences may already have strong ideas about Maggie, Brick and Big Daddy before the curtain rises.

Scarlett Johansson as Maggie the Cat

The defining commercial feature of the 2013 production was Scarlett Johansson.

Johansson was already an internationally recognized film star, with credits including Lost in Translation, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Prestige and The Avengers. Yet she was not simply a movie celebrity making an experimental appearance onstage.

Three years earlier, Johansson had made her Broadway debut in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge. Her performance earned her the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.

That achievement changed expectations surrounding her casting as Maggie. Rather than asking only whether a Hollywood star could handle Broadway, critics were evaluating the second Broadway appearance of an actress who had already won theater's most prominent American acting award.

Maggie is also a formidable role. Much of the first act depends upon her, including extended stretches in which she tries to provoke, seduce, reason with and emotionally penetrate Brick while he largely resists her.

Johansson was only 28 during the production, close to the age at which Elizabeth Taylor had played Maggie in the famous film. The comparison inevitably became part of the surrounding publicity.

Vogue devoted significant coverage to the production, including a feature photographed by Annie Leibovitz pairing Johansson and Walker. CBS News interviewed Johansson shortly before opening, discussing both the difficulty of the role and whether her enormous movie following would translate into Broadway ticket buyers.

It largely did.

Benjamin Walker as Brick

Opposite Johansson was Benjamin Walker as Brick Pollitt.

Walker already had substantial theatrical credentials. He was especially associated with the title role in the Broadway musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, in which his energetic and unconventional performance helped establish him as a distinctive stage presence.

Brick demanded something very different.

For much of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brick is deliberately withdrawn. He drinks, resists Maggie, avoids emotional confrontation and waits for the "click" that he believes alcohol will provide—the moment when his mind becomes peaceful.

The role therefore requires an actor to communicate considerable internal turmoil while frequently appearing passive.

Walker also spent much of the production moving with crutches because Brick has injured his ankle. The combination of limited physical mobility, long stretches of listening and the character's emotional repression makes Brick deceptively difficult to play.

The production's second act gave Walker his most substantial confrontation when Brick and Big Daddy engage in an extended father-son reckoning over alcoholism, sexuality, death, family expectations and truth.

Ciarán Hinds, Debra Monk and the Supporting Cast

Ciarán Hinds played Big Daddy.

Already respected for extensive stage and screen work, Hinds brought considerable physical and vocal force to the role of the wealthy plantation owner. Big Daddy is crude, domineering and accustomed to exercising authority, but his relationship with Brick exposes emotional vulnerabilities beneath that power.

Debra Monk played Big Mama. A Tony and Emmy Award winner, Monk portrayed a woman simultaneously devoted to her husband and wounded by his dismissiveness toward her.

Emily Bergl played Mae, while Michael Park portrayed Gooper, Brick's older brother. Mae and Gooper form the competing branch of the Pollitt family, acutely aware that Big Daddy's death could determine the distribution of his fortune.

The company also included numerous supporting performers and child actors representing the sprawling Pollitt household.

The result was an ensemble surrounding the four marquee performers rather than a production dependent solely on Johansson, even though her celebrity inevitably dominated advertising and media attention.

Rob Ashford's Direction

The production was directed by Rob Ashford, whose career had encompassed both choreography and directing.

Ashford won a Tony Award for choreographing Thoroughly Modern Millie and had worked on major Broadway productions including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Promises, Promises and Evita. In London, his directing work included A Streetcar Named Desire and an acclaimed production of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie.

His staging of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof nevertheless became one of the most controversial elements of the 2013 revival.

During previews, the production experimented with physically representing the deceased Skipper onstage as a ghostlike presence. Jordan Dean appeared as "Ghost Skipper," externalizing a character who normally exists only through memories and conversation.

The device was eliminated before the production settled into its final form.

That decision is revealing. Skipper's absence is fundamental to Williams's play: the audience is forced to reconstruct him through conflicting recollections and implications. Making him physically visible altered that ambiguity. Removing the character restored the sense that Brick, Maggie and the audience are all grappling with someone who can no longer explain himself.

Design and Atmosphere

Christopher Oram designed the scenery. Julie Weiss created the costumes, Neil Austin designed the lighting, and Adam Cork was responsible for music and sound.

The production emphasized the oppressive atmosphere of the Pollitt plantation and the emotional claustrophobia of Maggie and Brick's bedroom. The bed itself became a visually dominant object—a fitting symbol in a drama where the couple's refusal or inability to have sex has enormous emotional and financial consequences.

The design favored faded Southern grandeur rather than a brightly romanticized plantation. Lighting, shadows, curtains and sound contributed to an atmosphere of decay and approaching death.

Critics differed sharply over whether these effects deepened Williams's drama or overwhelmed it.

Some particularly objected to prominent sound cues and other directorial flourishes that seemed to emphasize emotions already apparent in Williams's language. Others found considerable theatrical power in the production despite its excesses.

Richard Rodgers Theatre and Its Broadway Location

The production played at the Richard Rodgers Theatre at 226 West 46th Street in Manhattan, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue.

This placed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof directly within New York's Theater District, close to Times Square and surrounded by Broadway houses, restaurants, hotels and other tourist destinations. The location made the production easily accessible to both local theatergoers and visitors.

The Richard Rodgers Theatre has a long Broadway history. Originally opened in 1925 as Chanin's 46th Street Theatre, it was later known as the 46th Street Theatre before being renamed for composer Richard Rodgers in 1990.

Its later association with Hamilton has made the theater even more internationally recognizable, but decades before that phenomenon it had already hosted numerous important Broadway productions.

For Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the theater provided approximately 1,380 seats, making the production a substantial commercial undertaking rather than an intimate limited-run drama.

Producers and Commercial Organization

The 2013 revival was produced by an extensive group of established Broadway producers and theatrical organizations.

The producing roster included Stuart Thompson, Jon B. Platt, The Araca Group, Roger Berlind, Scott M. Delman, Roy Furman, Ruth Hendel, Carl Moellenberg, Scott and Brian Zeilinger, Nederlander Presentations, Tulchin/Bartner Productions and Scott Rudin, with Kevin Emrick credited as an associate producer.

This was therefore a major commercial Broadway production backed by people and organizations with substantial experience in theatrical financing, management and production.

The Richard Rodgers Theatre itself was operated by the Nederlander Organization.

CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com should be understood in that commercial context. Its original role was not that of an independent Tennessee Williams reference site. It was the promotional web identity attached to a specific Broadway revival, supporting the production's marketing and providing audiences with information about the show.

Popularity, Attendance and Broadway Grosses

The production's commercial statistics help put its popularity into perspective.

Playbill's historical production data reports approximately $11.66 million in total grosses when the preview period and complete engagement are included. Its highest reported weekly gross was $966,948 during the week ending December 30, 2012. The average paid ticket price across the complete engagement was approximately $97, and average attendance was about 74 percent of capacity.

Different Broadway databases can show lower calendar-year totals because performances in December 2012 fall outside their 2013 calculations. BroadwayWorld's 2013-only figures, for example, record roughly $9.85 million in grosses and more than 102,000 admissions during the 2013 portion of the run.

The production's attendance fluctuated substantially.

During the week containing its official opening, it played to more than 90 percent of capacity. The week ending February 17 produced approximately $958,000 in grosses and nearly 80 percent attendance. Other weeks dropped into the 60-percent range.

These numbers suggest a production with significant public interest and strong star appeal, but not a runaway sellout throughout its entire engagement.

Importantly, it was always scheduled as a limited engagement. It closed March 30, 2013, after 15 weeks, with 34 previews and 84 regular performances. At closing, representatives did not publicly confirm whether the production had recouped its capitalization.

Critical Reception

Reviews were notably mixed.

Johansson generally received more favorable notices than the production surrounding her.

Ben Brantley's New York Times assessment found imperfections in her interpretation of Maggie but regarded her as a stage performer of formidable presence and intelligence. Vogue was considerably more enthusiastic, while the New York Post described her performance in strongly favorable terms.

The Guardian gave the production three stars out of five. Its review praised aspects of Johansson's work but argued that Ashford's production functioned too much as an inconsistently handled star vehicle.

The Telegraph was more positive, awarding four stars and emphasizing the difficulty of Maggie's role, Johansson's charisma and strong contributions from Hinds, Walker, Monk and Bergl.

The Hollywood Reporter delivered one of the harshest assessments. Its criticism focused primarily on Ashford's direction, particularly intrusive sound, music and staging devices that it felt interfered with the rhythms of Williams's writing. At the same time, the review acknowledged Johansson's stage presence and found significant power in the confrontation between Walker's Brick and Hinds's Big Daddy.

This division is useful when assessing the revival historically. It was not a universally acclaimed landmark interpretation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Rather, it was a high-profile, ambitious and much-discussed production whose central actress was often regarded as more successful than the overall staging.

BroadwayWorld's aggregation of contemporary criticism similarly reflects a mixed critical consensus.

Awards and Recognition

Unlike several earlier Broadway productions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the 2013 revival did not become a major Tony Awards contender.

Scarlett Johansson did, however, receive a 2013 Drama League Distinguished Performance Award nomination for her portrayal of Maggie.

The contrast with the play's broader awards history is notable.

The original Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and received multiple Tony nominations. Later Broadway revivals also produced prominent nominations and awards. Charles Durning, for example, won the 1990 Tony Award for his performance as Big Daddy.

Johansson herself entered the 2013 production already possessing a Tony Award from A View From the Bridge.

Thus, even without a large collection of new awards, the revival was surrounded by award-winning talent and belonged to a theatrical lineage stretching back nearly six decades.

Press and Media Coverage

One of the production's clearest measures of cultural visibility was the breadth of its media coverage.

This was not a revival discussed only in specialist theater publications.

Vogue featured Johansson and Walker before opening and later reviewed the production. CBS News interviewed Johansson. The New York Times, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, USA Today, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Broadway.com, Playbill and numerous other outlets covered or reviewed the production.

The press interest illustrates the marketing advantage of casting a globally recognizable movie star in a classic Broadway play.

Johansson created a crossover audience. Readers who might not routinely follow Broadway news nevertheless knew her from films, while serious theater audiences were curious whether her Tony-winning debut had represented a one-time achievement or the beginning of a sustained stage career.

The Website's Likely Audience and Purpose

CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com served several overlapping audiences.

The most immediate audience consisted of potential ticket buyers looking for information about the current Broadway production. Another group consisted of Johansson fans who might be considering Broadway specifically because she was appearing in the show.

The site also appealed to traditional theatergoers interested in Tennessee Williams, Benjamin Walker, Ciarán Hinds, Debra Monk or Rob Ashford.

Its promotional material emphasized recognizable credentials: Johansson's Tony Award, Williams's Pulitzer Prize, Ashford's Broadway and West End experience and the extensive accomplishments of the creative team.

Press quotations served an equally important purpose. Favorable excerpts could be extracted from a mixed body of reviews and transformed into concise endorsements suitable for advertising.

This practice is standard Broadway marketing, but preserved websites are particularly useful because they show which critical comments producers chose to emphasize.

The Revival in the History of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

By 2013, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had already returned to Broadway repeatedly.

After the 1955 original came revivals in 1974, 1990, 2003 and 2008. The 2008 production was particularly culturally significant because director Debbie Allen assembled an all-Black cast headed by Terrence Howard, Anika Noni Rose, James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad.

The 2013 production was therefore the sixth Broadway staging of the play, counting the original.

This frequency says something important about Williams's durability. Producers repeatedly believe that new actors, directors and generations of audiences can discover something different within the Pollitt family.

Maggie alone has attracted an extraordinary succession of performers. Barbara Bel Geddes originated the role on Broadway. Elizabeth Ashley, Kathleen Turner, Ashley Judd, Anika Noni Rose and Scarlett Johansson subsequently played Maggie in major Broadway revivals, while Elizabeth Taylor made the character internationally famous on film.

Each actress inevitably changes the balance of the play.

The 2013 production's identity was inseparable from Johansson: her combination of movie-star glamour, sexuality, toughness and previously demonstrated theatrical ability made Maggie an unusually logical role for this stage of her career.

Cultural and Social Significance

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof continues to matter because its conflicts extend far beyond the wealthy Southern family depicted onstage.

Brick's grief over Skipper and his inability to discuss their relationship openly reflect the destructive effects of repression. Maggie's struggle exposes the precariousness of marriage, sexuality and economic security. Big Daddy's illness forces the entire family to confront mortality while simultaneously maneuvering for wealth.

Williams also examines masculinity. Brick has been celebrated for athletic achievement and conventional masculine attractiveness, yet he is emotionally paralyzed. Big Daddy embodies a louder, more aggressive form of masculinity based on money, sexual appetite and authority. Neither model produces emotional honesty.

The play's treatment of homosexuality is inseparable from the period in which Williams wrote it. Williams himself was gay, and the coded treatment of Brick and Skipper has generated decades of debate among directors, actors, scholars and audiences.

The famous 1958 film softened this dimension substantially because of Hollywood censorship restrictions of the period. Modern stage productions can engage Williams's sexual subtext far more directly.

That makes every revival partly a conversation between the social conventions of 1955 and those of the era in which the revival is produced.

What CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com Represents Today

CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com is most valuable today as a record of a particular moment in Broadway history.

The 2013 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof existed for only a few months. Sets were dismantled, actors moved to other projects and the Richard Rodgers Theatre welcomed new productions. Yet the web presence associated with the show preserves information that would otherwise be scattered among Playbills, newspaper archives, theater databases and personal memories.

It records a production in which a major Hollywood actress returned to Broadway to tackle one of American drama's most demanding female roles. It documents a prominent director attempting to find a new theatrical language for an extremely familiar play. It also preserves the names of designers, performers and producers whose contributions could easily disappear behind the marquee names.

For researchers, theater fans and people interested in Broadway history, that gives the domain a purpose far beyond its original function as a marketing address.

Legacy of the 2013 Production

The 2013 revival did not replace the original production, the Elizabeth Taylor-Paul Newman film or the acclaimed performances associated with earlier revivals in the cultural memory of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

It added another interpretation to them.

Its greatest legacy is arguably Johansson's Maggie. Even critics who objected to Ashford's direction frequently found something substantial in her performance, reinforcing the conclusion established by A View From the Bridge that Johansson was not simply a movie star visiting Broadway.

The production also demonstrated the continuing commercial potential of Tennessee Williams. Nearly six decades after the original Broadway opening, audiences were still willing to pay Broadway prices to spend almost three hours watching the Pollitt family argue about sex, death, money, alcohol, inheritance and truth.

That longevity may be the most important fact surrounding CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com.

The website represents a short-lived Broadway engagement, but the play it promoted has proved anything but short-lived. From its 1955 Pulitzer Prize through repeated Broadway revivals, major international productions and the enduring fame of the 1958 film, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof remains one of the defining works of American theater.

The 2013 revival occupies a distinctive place in that history: a celebrity-driven yet serious attempt to reinterpret Williams for a new generation, anchored by Scarlett Johansson at a pivotal moment in her stage career and preserved online through the domain that once invited audiences to see Maggie, Brick and the Pollitt family confront their secrets once again.

CatOnAHotTinRoofBroadway.com