Director Elia Kazan suggested that Tennessee Williams craft a more redemptive ending to the play. Cat has two prominent alternative endings. However, she tells Brick at the end of Act One, "I'm honest! Give me credit for just that, will you please?"(II.1146) Is Maggie honest? Maggie the Cat definitely knows how to get what she wants through manipulation, flirtation, and insinuation. Do you believe Tennessee Williams here? What do you think this play is about? I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent-fiercely charged!-interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis" (II.1135-1140). Tennessee Williams says in a stage note in Act II, "the bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. Still others believe Cat comments on American history. Others disagree completely and feel that it is a commentary on the changing American concept of family.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |