Three Plays
Authors: Tennessee Williams
Three Plays
By Tennessee Williams
Contents
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
By Tennessee Williams, 1955
CONTENTS
The set is the bed-sitting-room of a plantation home in the Mississippi Delta. It is along an upstairs gallery which probably runs around the entire house; it has two pairs of very wide doors opening onto the gallery, showing white balustrades against a fair summer sky that fades into dusk and night during the course of the play, which occupies precisely the time of its performance, excepting, of course, the fifteen minutes of intermission.
Perhaps the style of the room is not what you would expect in the home of the Delta's biggest cotton-planter. It is Victorian with a touch of the Far East. It hasn't changed much since it was occupied by the original owners of the place, Jack Straw and Peter Ochello, a pair of old bachelors who shared this room all their lives together. In other words, the room must evoke some ghosts; it is gently and poetically haunted by a relationship that must have involved a tenderness which was uncommon. This may be irrelevant or unnecessary, but I once saw a reproduction of a faded photograph of the veranda of Robert Louis Stevenson's home on that Samoan Island where he spent his last years, and there was a quality of tender light on weathered wood, such as porch furniture made of bamboo and wicker, exposed to tropical suns and tropical rains, which came to mind when I thought about the set for this play, bringing also to mind the grace and comfort of light, the reassurance it gives, on a late and fair afternoon in summer, the way that no matter what, even dread of death, is gently touched and soothed by it. For the set is the background for a play that deals with human extremities of emotion, and it needs that softness behind it.
The bathroom door, showing only pale-blue tile and silver towel racks, is in one side wall; the hall door in the opposite wall. Two articles of furniture need mention: a big double bed which staging should make a functional part of the set as often as suitable, the surface of which should be slightly raked to make figures on it seen more easily; and against the wall space between the two huge double doors upstage: a monumental monstrosity peculiar to our times, a
huge
console combination of radio-phonograph (Hi-Fi with three speakers) TV set
and
liquor cabinet, bearing and containing many glasses and bottles, all in one piece, which is a composition of muted silver tones, and the opalescent tones of reflecting glass, a chromatic link, this thing, between the sepia (tawny gold) tones of the interior and the cool (white and blue) tones of the gallery and sky. This piece of furniture (?!), this monument, is a very complete and compact little shrine to virtually all the comforts and illusions behind which we hide from such things as the characters in the play are faced with....
The set should be far less realistic than I have so far implied in this description of it. I think the walls below the ceiling should dissolve mysteriously into air; the set should be roofed by the sky; stars and moon suggested by traces of milky pallor, as if they were observed through a telescope lens out of focus.
Anything else I can think of? Oh, yes, fanlights (transoms shaped like an open glass fan) above all the doors in the set, with panes of blue and amber, and above all, the designer should take as many pains to give the actors room to move about freely (to show their restlessness, their passion for breaking out) as if it were a set for a ballet.
An evening in summer. The action is continuous, with two intermissions.
Main Characters:
MARGARET
BRICK
MAE
GOOPER
BIG MAMA
BIG DADDY
REVEREND TOOKER
DOCTOR BAUGH
ACT ONE
At the rise of the curtain someone is taking a shower in the bathroom, the door of which is half open. A pretty young woman, with anxious lines in her face, enters the bedroom and crosses to the bathroom door.
MARGARET
[shouting above roar of water]
: One of those no-neck monsters hit me with a hot buttered biscuit so I havet' change!
[Margaret's voice is both rapid and drawling. In her long speeches she has the vocal tricks of a priest delivering a liturgical chant, the lines are almost sung, always continuing a little beyond her breath so she has to gasp for another. Sometimes she intersperses the lines with a little wordless singing, such as "Da-da-daaaa" | Water turns off and Brick calls out to her, but is still unseen. A tone of politely feigned interest, masking indifference, or worse, is characteristic of his speech with Margaret.]
BRICK
: Wha'd you say, Maggie? Water was on s' loud I couldn't hear ya....
MARGARET
: Well, I!—just remarked that!—one of th' no-neck monsters messed up m' lovely lace dress so I got t' cha-a-ange....
[She opens and kicks shut drawers of the dresser.]
BRICK
: Why d'ya call Gooper's kiddies no-neck monsters?
MARGARET
: Because they've got no necks! Isn't that a good enough reason?
BRICK
: Don't they have any necks?
MARGARET
: None visible. Their fat little heads are set on their fat little bodies without a bit of connexion.
BRICK
: That's too bad.
MARGARET
: Yes, it's too bad because you can't wring their necks if they've got no necks to wring! Isn't that right, honey?
[She steps out of her dress, stands in a slip of ivory satin and lace.]
Yep, they're no-neck monsters, monsters.... All no-neck people are monsters....
[Children shriek downstairs.]
Hear them? Hear them screaming? I don't know where their voice-boxes are located since they don't have necks. I tell you I got so nervous at that table tonight I thought I would throw back my head and utter a scream you could hear across the Arkansas border an' parts of Louisiana an' Tennessee. I said to your charming sister-in-law, Mae, honey, couldn't you feed those precious little things at a separate table with an oilcloth cover? They make such a mess an' the lace cloth looks so pretty! She made enormous eyes at me and said, 'Ohhh, noooooo! On Big Daddy's birthday? Why, he would never forgive me!' Well, I want you to know, Big Daddy hadn't been at the table two minutes with those five no-neck monsters slobbering and drooling over their food before he threw down his fork an' shouted, 'Fo' God's sake, Gooper, why don't you put them pigs at a trough in th' kitchen?'—Well, I swear, I simply could have di-ieed!
Think of it, Brick, they've got five of them and number six is coming. They've brought the whole bunch down here like animals to display at a county fair. Why, they have those children doin' tricks all the time! 'Junior, show Big Daddy how you do this, show Big Daddy how you do that, say your little piece fo' Big Daddy, Sister. Show your dimples, Sugar. Brother, show Big Daddy how you stand on your head!'—It goes on all the time, along with constant little remarks and innuendoes about the fact that you and I have not produced any children, are totally childless and therefore totally useless!—Of course it's comical but it's also disgusting since it's so obvious what they're up to!
BRICK
[without interest]
: What are they up to, Maggie?
MARGARET
: Why, you know what they're up to!
BRICK
[appearing]
: No, I don't know what they're up to.
[He stands there in the bathroom doorway drying his hair with a towel and hanging on to the towel rack because one ankle is broken, plastered and bound. He is still slim and firm as a boy.—His liquor hasn't started tearing him down outside. He has the additional charm of that cool air of detachment that people have who have given up the struggle. But now and then, when disturbed, something flashes behind it, like lightning in a fair sky, which shows that at some deeper level he is far from peaceful. Perhaps in a stronger light he would show some signs of deliquescence, but the fading, still warm, light from the gallery treats him gently.]
MARGARET
: I'll tell you what they're up to, boy of mine!—They're up to cutting you out of your father's estate, and—
[She freezes momentarily before her next remark. Her voice drops as if it were somehow a personally embarrassing admission.]
—Now we know that Big Daddy's dyin' of—
cancer
....
[There are voices on the lawn below | long-drawn calls across distance. Margaret raises her lovely bare arms and powders her armpits with a light sigh. | She adjusts the angle of a magnifying mirror to straighten an eyelash, then rises fretfully saying:]
There's so much light in the room it—
BRICK
[softly but sharply]
: Do we?
MARGARET
: Do we what?
BRICK
: Know Big Daddy's dyin' of cancer?
MARGARET
: Got the report today.
BRICK
: Oh...
MARGARET
[letting down bamboo blinds which cast long, gold-fretted shadows over the room]
: Yep, got th' report just now... it didn't surprise me, Baby....
[Her voice has range, and music; sometimes it drops low as a boy's and you have a sudden image of her playing boy's games as a child.]
I recognized the symptoms soon's we got here last spring and I'm willin' to bet you that Brother Man and his wife were pretty sure of it, too. That more than likely explains why their usual summer migration to the coolness of the Great Smokies was passed up this summer in favor of hustlin' down here ev'ry whipstitch with their whole screamin' tribe! And why so many allusions have been made to Rainbow Hill lately. You know what Rainbow Hill is? Place that's famous for treatin' alcoholics an' dope fiends in the movies!