Fate Strikes the Delta

By T.E. Kalem

Size alters perception. What is seen on a television screen simply cannot equal the impact of a play unfolding on a stage. A further problem is that TV places disproportionate emphasis on closeups of talking heads; in the theater, the characters appear in the totality of their bodily presence.

Allowing for these limitations, NBC's series, A Tribute to American Theater, makes a highly auspicious debut with Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Dec. 6, 9 p.m. E.S.T.). Laurence Olivier, who is the artistic producer for all of the programs, plays Big Daddy. Maureen Stapleton is Big Mama, Natalie Wood has the role of Maggie the Cat, and Robert Wagner plays Brick, Maggie's sexually abstinent husband and Big Daddy's favorite son. They all give admirably strong and well-defined performances.

Several things work in their favor. Williams' central theme of mendacity has been reinforced by the lies of Watergate and Viet Nam; when Cat first appeared in 1955, it did not seem a parable of growing corruption in U.S. life. Time has also enhanced the understanding of Williams. He is no longer seen as the purveyor of grotesque Southern creatures. Gradually, it has become clear that his true terrain is the violated chambers of the human heart.

Any play of magnitude lends itself to varying interpretations. The original Big Daddy, Burl Ives, portrayed him as a man with a sensual lust for life. In 1974's Broadway revival, Fred Gwynne brought out his cruel, vindictive side. With a flawless Southern accent that testifies to his lifelong perfection of craft, Olivier plays Big Daddy as the feudal lord of "28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the Valley Nile," a man born with the habit of imperial command.

In portraying Brick, a difficult, ambiguous role, Wagner chooses to be a taciturn neutral who has made a separate, soluble peace with the bottle. Yet at the end, he seems gallantly ready to break his marital fast to honor Maggie's plantation-hungry lie to Big Daddy that she is pregnant.

Since the setting is a splendid antebellum mansion, it lacks that faint, haunting perfume of defeat that ought always to cling to a work of Tennessee Williams. But perhaps the Deep South is not ante-or postbellum any more. T.E. Kalem

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