Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Exam Question

A Broadway director criticised Tennessee Williams’ original Act Three on three counts. He claimed that Big Daddy should not be absent from the Act; that there should be perceptible change in Brick’s character after his interview with Big Daddy; and that the character of Maggie should be more sympathetic.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the director?

When the play was staged on Broadway in New York in 1955 Elia Kazan, a friend of Williams who has directed many of his other plays on Broadway including �A Streetcar Named Desire’, directed it. Kazan had reservations about the original Act Three and asked Williams to rewrite it. He felt that Big Daddy should not disappear after Act Two, that the impact of the conversation between Big Daddy and Brick in Act Two should have a change on Bricks character in the following act; and that Maggie should be made a clearly more sympathetic character. Williams rewrote the act to incorporate Kazan’s suggestions but in his note of explanation for the rewrite he explains that he did not feel that all the changes were necessary. It was only the third of the suggestions that he was keen on as although he explains that he sympathised with her and “liked her myself” he could see that she may need to be more clearly sympathetic to the audience.

In the Broadway version of Act Three Big Daddy reappears to tell a bawdy story about an elephant’s state of sexual arousal. Although the story comes abruptly it fits with the play due to the great deal of animal and circus imagery. The purpose of telling the story is an ironic commentary on the childless Maggie and Brick and to warn Brick not to fuss about having children and to simply get on with it. The crude language used in the story is like that used in Act Two where he claims he wanted women to “hump”; it shows that while he is dying he has a lot of vitality. It is this story that provokes Maggie into making the false claim that she is pregnant directly to Big Daddy. Big Daddy re-enters the act after leaving at the beginning at the time of a storm, which was not in the original Act Three. It is symbolic of chaos, conflict and crisis within the family as everything is in upheaval and is a reason for him to re-enter. Kazan picked up the hint about the storm as Williams wrote that he wanted to capture the family as an “interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis”. However the thundercloud is not literal, it is the lowering cloud of human feelings before they burst into extremity. I feel that the storm is possibly over the top and is not needed to show the extreme crisis within the family although it is typical of drama to use features like this to reinforce feelings and ideas. It is a part of Williams’ �plastic theatre’ in which he saw writing as “something more organic than words, something closer to being and action”. In the original version of Act Three Big Daddy is absent altogether and is only heard from offstage crying in agony as the pain kicks in. I feel that the dramatic tension of the original version is strong enough not to need the somewhat obvious theatricality of a storm.

Tennessee Williams felt that Bricks moral paralysis is a root thing in his tragedy and that any conversation, however revelatory could never effect “so immediate a change in the heart or even conduct of a person in Brick’s state of spiritual disrepair”. In the Broadway version of Act Three Brick is much more responsive and supportive towards Maggie. He even admits that he admires Maggie and even praises her, “You’re a live cat, aren’t you?” He also seems more positive in confronting his drink problem as he asks Maggie to put him into “Rainbow Hill”, a rehab centre as he feels “he ought to go there” as he has “lied to himself” for too long. In this version of Act Three Brick is has much more response when Maggie announces she is pregnant and even sticks up for her when Gooper and Mae criticise her. Brick has much more active feelings for Maggie as “Brick watches her with growing admiration”. I feel that the plausibility of the change in Brick’s character is not strong. The change happens too quickly and is overdone at times; change would not happen this quick, as there is no time lapse within acts. Therefore Brick has had no time to reflect on changing and so is not entirely realistic as in real life a change would not occur quickly, as Williams also believed. The audience may see the changed version to be more positive and less ambiguous as it create the possibility of a more positive ending for Brick and Maggie, whereas in the original version although she manages to lure him into bed it is not as clear whether they will resume their relationship or not. Also it is more dramatic