Phoenix Theatre To Present Williams Play

Press, Volume C, Issue 29479, 4 April 1961, Page 9

Phoenix Theatre To Present Williams Play

“Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” the play which won Tennessee Williams the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics’ Award for the 1954-55 season, will be presented in Christchurch by the Phoenix Theatre from Monday to Saturday next week. The play is set on a big plantation house on the Mississippi Delta. The family of Big Daddy, the plantation owner has gathered for his sixty-fifth birthday, concealing among themselves from Big Daddy that he has an incurable disease. Big Daddy favours his son Brick, to his other son, Cooper, but Brick’s marriage has been childless and Big Daddy wants a grandson from him. The drama is largely concerned with the relationship between Brick and his wife. Margaret, sometimes called Maggie the Cat, and in the later stages of the play, between Brick and his father. Brick has refused to join in the festivities. The Phoenix Theatre production is by Alan de Malmanche who produced "Othello” for the group last year. The sets have been designed by Raymond Boyce, whose work has been partly financed by the New Zealand Drama Council. It is one of the few occasions on which Mr Boyce has worked on an amateur production. Alan de Malmanche produced another Tennessee Williams play. “Summer and Smoke,” for the Risingholme Drama Group in 1954. Since his last production in Christchurch last year, he has completed a flve-month engagement as artistic director for the annual “Festival of the Pines” at Brooklands Bowl. New Plymouth. He was -the principal tutor at the New

Zealand Drama Council’s residential summer school at Massey College. Edith Wood, a young Wellington actress who will appear in Christchurch for the first time, will play Margaret. Douglas Nottage will play Brick, Gregory Kane will appear as Big Daddy, Margaret Vucetich as Big Mama. Diana Evans-Roberts as Mae, Cooper's wife, and W. Lexington-Jones as Cooper.

Douglas Nottage played the title role in the open-air production of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” in the “Festival of the Pines” this year.