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arbieroo

Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

On a sultry summer evening family meets and secrets are revealed...so far, so a zillion other plays. Here, it's not really what the secrets are that's interesting, it's who the characters are and where the author's sympathies lie.

 

The first act slowly winds up to a very dramatic finish and tensions are racked up higher still in act 2. Then something strange happens - act 3 occurs twice! Williams has included his original draft of act 3 and the performance version, modified in response to the original director. It's a bit weird. Over-all I think I like the original version more.

 

Williams does some things I don't recall ever having seen before; he discusses the audience in stage direction and at one point rambles off into philosophising about the purpose of drama and such like. That comes as a bit of a shock after previously reading no drama except Ben Jonson this year, where-in you're lucky to get anything beyond entrance and exit instructions.

 

My only other experience with Williams is a production of The Glass Menagerie. There's overlap in theme and setting (the South, isolation) and that experience was excellent - this would clearly be even better in a decent production. I am now keen to pursue Williams a great deal further.