Tomorrow evening (October 7), Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisyfinally makes its Broadway debut after first premiering Off-Broadway 23 years ago.
With David Esbjornson behind the wheel to steer the play, this production has already become a very hot ticket because of its three top-drawer, Tony-winning actors. Vanessa Redgrave will portray Daisy Werthan, James Earl Jones plays her chauffeur and friend Hoke Colburn and Boyd Gaines returns to Broadway as Daisy's son Boolie, who insists his mother's car keys be taken away.
A timeless American play, which inspired the beloved Academy Award-winning film, Driving Miss Daisy tells the affecting story of the decades-long relationship between a stubborn Southern matriarch and her compassionate chauffeur. Their iconic tale of pride, changing times and the transformative power of friendship has warmed the hearts of millions, and is being performed for the first time on a Broadway stage.
Before I ever saw that Oscar-winning film, I caught Driving Miss Daisy on a West End stage in 1988. I was fortunate to see the late Dame Wendy Hiller and a young Clarke Peters in the two primary roles. It didn't matter that the set design was incredibly spare because the two of them were simply magnificent. It remains one of the most memorable nights I've ever enjoyed at the theatre.
Previews for this new "strictly limited engagement" begin October 7 at the John Golden Theatre. The show opens October 25 and is only slated to run through January 29, 2011.
To see this trio of stage greats demonstrate their acting prowess, is it any wonder that many performances are already selling out?
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Starry Driving Miss Daisy Steers Toward Great White Way
No sooner do I post my story on all the plays and musicals that have been confirmed for Broadway this next season and up pops another new show. Well, perhaps not exactly "new."
Directed by David Esbjornson, this revival will be Miss Daisy's first trip ever down Broadway, after having first appeared 23 years ago at Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons with Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman.
The one and only time I caught Driving Miss Daisy on stage came in 1988 when I experienced the play in London. I'll never forget that incredible evening with the late Dame Wendy Hiller portraying Daisy Werthan opposite a young Clarke Peters as her chauffeur and companion Hoke Colburn. Presented as a three-hander, the stage was virtually bear save for some folding chairs lined up in lieu of car seats. Hiller and Peters didn't need any props to power their story of enduring friendship forward. They were simply magnificent, and it was a night at the theatre unlike any other I've ever enjoyed.
If I have any quibble with yesterday's announcement, it's that James Earl Jones is six years older than Vanessa Redgrave. The entire play's premise is built around Miss Daisy being too old to drive herself, let alone by someone on the cusp of turning 80. That Jones is now six years older than Morgan Freeman, who had just turned 50 when he first took to the wheel of the 1987 Off-Broadway production, makes me wonder how exactly Esbjornson will conceive his Hoke. But given how much I admire both Redgrave and Jones, you can bet that I'm looking forward to seeing this production.
Slated to being previews at the John Golden Theatre on October 7, Driving Miss Daisy will open on October 25. The limited engagement will conclude its run January 29, 2011.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
In keeping with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I have received nothing of value in exchange for this post.
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (The SOB Review) - Broadhurst Theatre, New York, NY
*** (out of ****)
OK, so the jazzy saxaphone motif is a bit forced.
Sure, the exact time setting is as clear as Mississippi mud due to Ray Klausen's ambiguous set design.
Yes, the spotlight effect offered by William H. Grant III on each flashback soliloquy is a tad annoying and unnecessary.
And it goes without saying that by making many of the play's sacrosanct lines ... well ... funny, Debbie Allen takes more liberties with Tennessee Williams' talents than a Cape Cod houseboy ever could.
But the net effect of Allen's direction lends this latest Broadway life for Williams' irascible Cat On A Hot Tin Roofwith a certain revelatory sympathetic spin, providing each of its major players with more nuance and subtle shading than I ever thought possible. Say what you will about the certain aforementioned risks Allen has made in her direction, her overall gamble has largely paid off, particularly in drawing out fine to superb performances from her quartet of celebrated lead actors.
Chief among them is James Earl Jones' surprisingly compassionate Big Daddy, whose love for son Brick (Terrence Howard in an initially uneven, yet ultimately moving Broadway debut) should never, ever be in question. He may not appear until the Second Act, but once he does, Jones offers the type of booming, commanding presence that makes it difficult to look anywhere else.
However, you just can't help but do just that as Phylicia Rashad turns Big Mama into a tour de force. Her Big Mama is so much more than the blubbering simpleton she's often made out to be. When Rashad sheds real tears, she conveys both a desperate and intelligent woman who's not only grieving her husband's cancer diagnosis, but also anxiously wishing she could get back into his heart after being shunted aside for so long.
Then there's the proverbial Cat herself. The stunningly sensual Anika Noni Rose astounds as she digs deeply into the furthest recesses of her heart and soul. Unlike Ashley Judd's benign turn in the role in the 2003 revival, Rose makes her sex-deprived Maggie one you can't help but empathize with in her steely determination to preserve her marriage with Brick. She has us believing her attempts are based more on her love for him than the desire to maintain her life of luxury and privilege. In Maggie, Rose is in full bloom.
Not only does Allen's unusually humane Cat On A Hot Tin Roof offer a moving night at the theatre, it's also highly entertaining.
Proclaiming the show as "thrilling," Newsday 's Linda Winer offers up what is perhaps the most favorable review: "Without the reverse casting, however, we would never have seen James Earl Jones as a shattering Big Daddy, tenderly holding and kissing the sensitive head of Terrence Howard, stunning as son Brick, in an attempt to transfer his own power into the beautiful young man's broken soul. Without daring to re-imagine Tennessee Williams' Mississippi plantation owners as nouveau-riche blacks in 1955, we would have been denied the sight of Phylicia Rashad squeezing her formidable self into a rare and heartbreaking interpretation of that silly dim bulb of a woman, Big Mama. And without the bold casting of the gifted, but hardly brand-name, Anika Noni Rose instead of the usual world-class sex bomb, we might still have never seen a Maggie who could say 'like a cat on a hot tin roof' a hundred different ways without sounding deranged.... How remarkable, then, that this cast finds such earthy conversational ease in the emotional humidity of Williams' Southern gothic milieu."
While lamenting that "it's too bad there's not a fully developed visual imagination at the creative helm to match the intuitive skills of its actors," David Rooney of Variety nevertheless mostly purrs: "While Debbie Allen's inexperience as a director shows in pedestrian physical staging with a tendency toward heavy-handedness, she lucks out where it most matters -- with her powerhouse cast.... [T]he design choices of Allen's production fudge the period just enough to make anachronism a non-issue.... Casting an untried stage actor as Brick was a risk, but Terrence Howard delivers. It's an understated performance that taps all the quiet, sleepy-eyed charisma of his screen work while also accessing the lacerating wounds of a man forced to confront emotional questions he'd rather ignore.... With James Earl Jones giving magnificent life to the cruelty, the ribald earthiness and the unexpected tenderness of this blustery self-made man, the production achieves the rare distinction of an entirely credible and deeply felt father-son bond at its center."
Deeming this Cat "well-worth seeing," New York Post's Clive Barnes offers a three-star review: "Director Debbie Allen and her producers have assembled a stellar cast, notably James Earl Jones as the cancer-wracked patriarch, Big Daddy, in a portrayal of bluster and subtlety that will surely leave a permanent mark on a role he both inhabits and embodies. And Jones is simply the first among an exceptional cast.... Rose's sexy yet poignant Maggie beautifully delineates love and desire against a pragmatic awareness of poverty.... Howard's low-key, high-tension Brick, waiting for the click of drunkenness to get him through another day of denial, and Rashad's broken yet defiant Big Mama -- her face a barometer of a family's pain -- fuse into one picture."
Declaring this a "flabby revival" that's "too often it’s without focus," Ben Brantley of The New York Times demurs: "The irresistible part of the equation is embodied most persuasively by Anika Noni Rose as that determined Southern seductress Maggie the Cat.... As it turns out, Ms. Rose more than holds her own. She pretty much runs the show whenever she’s onstage, and when she’s not, the show misses her management. Mr. Howard and Mr. Jones have moments that suggest what they might have made (and possibly still could make) of their roles. And Ms. Rashad presents a creditable, if arguably misconceived, Big Mama.... Ms. Rashad...seems to grow in supportive strength and mother-knows-best wisdom. The production acquires a haze of sentimentality that makes it soft when it should be sharp."
Weighing in on "Ms. Allen's fascinating-despite-itself revival," Eric Grode of The New York Sun takes note of the mendacity of the play's supposed color-blind casting: "With a production as lopsided and often wrongheaded as this, one has time to notice this sort of thing.... Mr. Howard, whose restless intelligence has enlivened even Hollywood piffle like "August Rush," overthinks a role that requires as much body as soul. His intensely internalized Brick barely has bones anymore, let alone the muscles on top of them. And so Ms. Allen overcompensates by having Ms. Rose curl herself around their four-poster bed like a stripper's pole.... This cheapening of Maggie is hardly Ms. Allen's only or most egregious error. She has a particularly tough time weaving in the offstage dialogue that frequently interrupts the central drama, and she routinely bungles the arrival of these characters when they do finally appear."
Concluding that this "hit and miss" production "mostly just simmers," JoeDziemianowicz of New York's Daily News mostly pans, with one notable exception: "[T]he one true thing that's fully alive in the uneven Broadway revival of the Tennessee Williams classic is the always dynamic James Earl Jones, who gives such a thundering and throbbing performance as dying Big Daddy that you feel it in your bones.... If only more of this Cat" had so much bite. You first get the sense that director Debbie Allen's production isn't one for the ages when you lay eyes on the stage of the Broadhurst: The set has the neutered charm of a hotel suite. Allen does the production no favors by having a sax man blow a bluesy tune before each act (an idea better suited to a different Williams play), or by fiddling with the lights during key monologues. The young stars have their ups and downs."
Whatever they have to say about this Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, it certainly sounds intriguing, even with the worst of the criticisms. The show had already extended (although Terrence Howard won't be with the production from April 15 to May 4 when Boris Kodjoe will perform the role of Brick). I'll be taking in a performance a little later this month and will let you know what I think in an upcoming SOB Review.
Proving there is more than one ducking way to skin Williams' ruttingCat, director Debbie Allen is infusing this production with some of the playwright's intended language. But the bigger news perhaps is that this particular incarnation of the show made it hereat all, given all the lives it has had, giving it a backstory worthy of the drama itself.
When Cat On A Hot Tin Roof first debuted in 1955 under the direction of Elia Kazan, the production caused a sensation in its depiction of a Southern family's attempt to cope with one spouse's latent homosexuality. All in all, the production would play 694 performances and score four Tony nominations. The cast included Ben Gazzara as Brick, Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie, Mildred Dunnock as Big Mama and Burl Ives as Big Daddy.
The third Broadway production of Cat came in 1990 with the 149 performance run directed by Howard Davies. It would also be the only one to win a Tony -- for Charles Durning's celebrated turn as Big Daddy, alongside Daniel Hugh Kelly's Brick, Kathleen Turner's Maggie and Polly Holliday's Big Mama. All totaled, the production earned three Tony nominations.
My first kick at the Cat was through the 2003 revival when I caught the final preview. In the scene where Big Daddy (Ned Beatty) is receiving his gift and asks "What's this?" A giddy voice came from somewhere near the front of the audience screaming enthusiastically, "Kitties!" I kid you not! Fortunately for the audience, Beatty and the rest of the cast -- including Jason Patric (Brick), Ashley Judd (Maggie) and the breathtaking Margo Martindale -- maintained their composure and didn't skip a beat. Yet it only earned one Tony nomination, running for 145 performances.
So will critics think that this all-star Cat has a life? Find out tomorrow as I share my critics' capsule (I'll be seeing the show myself a little later this month).
Rain: A Tribute To The Beatles Limited run extended through May 31, 2011 (Show will go on hiatus starting January 15 and reopen at Brooks Atkinson Theatre on February 8)
Rock Of Ages - Open-ended run (Show will go on hiatus starting January 9 and reopen at Helen Hayes Theatre in March)
As someone who has been involved in both politics and public relations, it's no wonder I love watching theatre. Good or bad, it's the raw energy of seeing a live performance that gets my adrenaline pumping. From the moment I saw my very first Broadway show ("Annie" in London in 1979), I was hooked. Now I see as many as 70 shows each year ranging from soaring musicals to two-hander plays. And these eyes just may be in an audience near you!
