Three Plays of Tennessee Williams

by Tennessee Williams

  MARGARET: Brick, I used to think that you were stronger than me and I didn't want to be overpowered by you. But now, since you've taken to liquor—you know what?—I guess it's bad, but now I'm stronger than you and I can love you more truly! Don't move that pillow. I'll move it right back if you do!—Brick?

  [She turns out all the lamps but a single rose-silk-shaded one by the bed.]

  I really have been to a doctor and I know what to do and—Brick?—this is my time by the calendar to conceive!

  BRICK: Yes, I understand, Maggie. But how are you going to conceive a child by a man in love with his liquor?

  MARGARET: By locking his liquor up and making him satisfy my desire before I unlock it!

  BRICK: Is that what you've done, Maggie?

  MARGARET: Look and see. That cabinet's mighty empty compared to before!

  BRICK: Well, I'll be a son of a—

  [He reaches for his crutch but she beats him to it and rushes out on the gallery, hurls the crutch over the rail and comes back in, panting. | There are running footsteps. Big Mama bursts into the room, her face all awry, gasping, stammering.]

  BIG MAMA: Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, where is it?

  MARGARET: Is this what you want, Big Mama?

  [Margaret hands her the package left by the doctor.]

  BIG MAMA: I can't bear it, oh! God! Oh, Brick! Brick, baby!

  [She rushes at him. He averts his face from her sobbing kisses. | Margaret watches with a tight smile.]

  My son, Big Daddy's boy! Little Father!

  [The groaning cry is heard again. She runs out, sobbing.]

  MARGARET: And so tonight we're going to make the lie true, and when that's done, I'll bring the liquor back here and we'll get drunk together, here, tonight, in this place that death has come into.... —What do you say?

  BRICK: I don't say anything. I guess there's nothing to say.

  MARGARET: Oh, you weak people, you weak, beautiful people!—who give up.—What you want is someone to—

  [She turns out the rose-silk lamp.]

  —take hold of you.—Gently, gently, with love! And—

  [The curtain begins to fall slowly.]

  I do love you, Brick, I do!

  BRICK [smiling with charming sadness]: Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?

  THE CURTAIN COMES DOWN

  THE END

  NOTE OF EXPLANATION

  Some day when time permits I would like to write a piece about the influence, its dangers and its values, of a powerful and highly imaginative director upon the development of a play, before and during production. It does have dangers, but it has them only if the playwright is excessively malleable or submissive, or the director is excessively insistent on ideas or interpretations of his own. Elia Kazan and I have enjoyed the advantages and avoided the dangers of this highly explosive relationship because of the deepest mutual respect for each other's creative function: we have worked together three times with a phenomenal absence of friction between us and each occasion has increased the trust.

  If you don't want a director's influence on your play, there are two ways to avoid it, and neither is good. One way is to arrive at an absolutely final draft of your play before you let your director see it, then hand it to him saying, Here it is, take it or leave it! The other way is to select a director who is content to put your play on the stage precisely as you conceived it with no ideas of his own. I said neither is a good way, and I meant it. No living playwright, that I can think of, hasn't something valuable to learn about his own work from a director so keenly perceptive as Elia Kazan. It so happened that in the case of Streetcar, Kazan was given a script that was completely finished. In the case of Cat, he was shown the first typed version of the play, and he was excited by it, but he had definite reservations about it which were concentrated in the third act. The gist of his reservations can be listed as three points: one, he felt that Big Daddy was too vivid and important a character to disappear from the play except as an offstage cry after the second act curtain; two, he felt that the character of Brick should undergo some apparent mutation as a result of the virtual vivisection that he undergoes in his interview with his father in Act Two. Three, he felt that the character of Margaret, while he understood that I sympathized with her and liked her myself, should be, if possible, more clearly sympathetic to an audience.

  It was only the third of these suggestions that I embraced wholeheartedly from the outset, because it so happened that Maggie the Cat had become steadily more charming to me as I worked on her characterization. I didn't want Big Daddy to reappear in Act Three and I felt that the moral paralysis of Brick was a root thing in his tragedy, and to show a dramatic progression would obscure the meaning of that tragedy in him and because I don't believe that a conversation, however revelatory, ever effects so immediate a change in the heart or even conduct of a person in Brick's state of spiritual disrepair.

  However, I wanted Kazan to direct the play, and though these suggestions were not made in the form of an ultimatum, I was fearful that I would lose his interest if I didn't re-examine the script from his point of view. I did. And you will find included in this published script the new third act that resulted from his creative influence on the play. The reception of the playing-script has more than justified, in my opinion, the adjustments made to that influence. A failure reaches fewer people, and touches fewer, than does a play that succeeds.

  It may be that Cat number one would have done just as well, or nearly, as Cat number two; it's an interesting question. At any rate, with the publication of both third acts in this volume, the reader can, if he wishes, make up his own mind about it.

  - TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

  ACT THREE (an updated different version - BROADWAY VERSION)

  AS PLAYED IN NEW YORK PRODUCTION

  Big Daddy is seen leaving at the end of Act Two.

  BIG DADDY [shouts, as he goes out]: ALL—LYIN'—DYIN'—L

  IARS! LIARS! LIARS!

  [After Big Daddy has gone, Margaret enters]

  MARGARET: Brick, what in the name of God was goin' on in this room?

  [Dixie and Trixie rush through the room from the hall, brandishing cap pistols, which they fire repeatedly, as they shout: 'Bang! Bang! Bang!' | Mae appears and turns the children back. At the same moment, Gooper, Reverend Tooker and Dr Baugh enter.]

  MAE: Dixie! You quit that! Gooper, will y'please git these kiddies t'baid? Right now?

  GOOPER [urging the children along]: Mae—you seen Big Mama?

  MAE: Not yet.

  [Dixie and Trixie vanish through hall.]

  REVEREND TOOKER [to Mae]: Those kiddies are so full of vitality.—I think I'll have to be startin' back to town.

  [Margaret turns to watch and listen.]

  MAE: Not yet, Preacher. You know we regard you as a member of this fam'ly, one of our closest an' dearest, so you just got t'be with us when Doc Baugh gives Big Mama th' actual truth about th' report from th' clinic.

  [Mae calls through door:]

  Has Big Daddy gone to bed, Brick?

  [Gooper has gone out at the beginning of the exchange between Mae and Reverend Tooker.]

  MARGARET [replying to Mae]: Yes, he's gone to bed.

  [To Brick:]

  Why'd Big Daddy shout 'liars'?

  GOOPER: Mae!

  [Mae exits | Reverend Tooker drifts.]

  BRICK: I didn't lie to Big Daddy. I've lied to nobody, nobody but myself, just lied to myself. The time has come to put me in Rainbow Hill, put me in Rainbow Hill, Maggie, I ought to go there.

  MARGARET: Over my dead body!

  [Brick starts out. She holds him.]

  Where do you think you're goin'?

  [Mae enters to Reverend Tooker, who comes to meet her.]

  BRICK [walking out]: Out for some air, I want air—

  GOOPER [entering]: Now, where is that old lady?

  MAE: Cantcha find her, Gooper?

  [Reverend Tooker goes out.]

  GOOPER: She's a
voidin' this talk.

  MAE: I think she senses somethin'.

  GOOPER [calls]: Sookey! Go find Big Mama an' tell her Doc Baugh an' the Preacher 've got to go soon.

  MAE: Don't let Big Daddy hear yuh!

  [Brings Dr Baugh.]

  REVEREND TOOKER [calls]: Big Mama.

  SOOKEY and DAISY [running in lawn, calling]: Miss Ida! Miss Ida!

  GOOPER [calling]: Lacey, you look downstairs for Big Mama!

  MARGARET: Brick, they're going to tell Big Mama the truth now, an' she needs you!

  [Reverend Tooker appears in lawn area.]

  DOCTOR BAUGH [to Mae]: This is going to be painful.

  MAE: Painful things can't always be avoided.

  DOCTOR BAUGH: That's what I've noticed about 'em, Sister Woman.

  REVEREND TOOKER [on lawn]: I see Big Mama!

  [Hurries off and reappears shortly in hall.]

  GOOPER [hurrying into hall]: She's gone round the gall'ry to Big Daddy's room. Hey, Mama!—Hey, Big Mama! Come here!

  MAE [calls]: Hush, Gooper! Don't holler, go to her!

  [Gooper and Reverend Tooker now appear together in hall. Big Mama runs in carrying a glass of milk. She crosses past Dr Baugh to Mae. Dr Baugh turns away.]

  BIG MAMA: Here I am! What d'you all want with me?

  GOOPER [steps toward Big Mama]: Big Mama, I told you we got to have this talk.

  BIG MAMA: What talk you talkin' about? I saw the light go on in Big Daddy's bedroom an' took him his glass of milk, an' he just shut the shutters right in my face.

  [She steps into room.]

  When old couples have been together as long as me an' Big Daddy, they, they get irritable with each other just from too much—devotion! Isn't that so?

  MARGARET [embracing Big Mama]: Yes, of course it's so.

  [Brick hobbles out to gallery.]

  BIG MAMA: I think Big Daddy was just worn out. He loves his fam'ly. He loves to have 'em around him, but it's a strain on his nerves. He wasn't himself tonight, Brick—

  [Brick passes her on his way out.]

  Big Daddy wasn't himself, I could tell he was all worked up.

  REVEREND TOOKER: I think he's remarkable.

  BIG MAMA: Yaiss! Just remarkable.

  [Puts down glass of milk.]

  Did you notice all the food he ate at that table?—Why he ate like a hawss!

  GOOPER: I hope he don't regret it.

  BIG MAMA [toward Gooper]: What! Why that man ate a huge piece of cawn bread with molasses on it! Helped himself twice to hoppin' john!

  MARGARET [to Big Mama]: Big Daddy loves hoppin' John. We had a real country dinner.

  BIG MAMA: Yais, he simply adores it! An' candied yams. Son-

  [looking out at Brick.]

  That man put away enough food at that table to stuff a field-hand.

  GOOPER: I hope he don't have to pay for it later on.

  BIG MAMA: What's that, Gooper?

  MAE: Gooper says he hopes Big Daddy doesn't suffer tonight.

  BIG MAMA [turns to Margaret]: Oh, shoot, Gooper says, Gooper says! Why should Big Daddy suffer for satisfyin' a nawmal appetite? There's nothin' wrong with that man but nerves; he's sound as a dollar! An' now he knows he is, an' that's why he ate such a supper. He had a big load off his mind, knowin' he wasn't doomed to—what—he thought he was—doomed t'—

  [She wavers. Margaret puts her arms around Big Mama.]

  GOOPER [urging Mae forward]: M A E!

  [Mae runs forward. She stands below Big Mama, Margaret above Big Mama. They help her to the wicker seat. Big Mama sits. Margaret sits above her. Mae stands behind her.]

  MARGARET: Bless his ole sweet soul.

  BIG MAMA: Yes—bless his heart.

  BRICK [on gallery, looking out]: Hello, moon, I envy you, you cool son of a bitch.

  BIG MAMA: I want Brick!

  MARGARET: He just stepped out for some fresh air.

  BIG MAMA: Honey! I want Brick!

  MAE: Bring li'l Brother in here so we cin talk.

  [Margaret exits to Brick on gallery.]

  BRICK [to the moon]: I envy you—you cool son of a bitch.

  MARGARET: Brick what're you doin' out here on the gall'ry baby?

  BRICK: Admirin' an' complimentin' th' man in the moon.

  MARGARET [to Brick]: Come in, baby. They're gettin' ready to tell Big Mama the truth.

  BRICK: I can't witness that thing in there.

  MAE: Doc Baugh, d'you think those vitamin B12 injections are all they're cracked up t'be?

  [Enters room to upper side, behind wicker seat.]

  DOCTOR BAUGH: Well, I guess they're as good t'be stuck with as anything else.

  [Looks at watch]

  MARGARET [tto Brick]: Big Mama needs you!

  BRICK: I can't witness that thing in there!

  BIG MAMA: What's wrong here? You all have such long faces, you sit here waitin' for somethin' like a bomb—to go off.

  GOOPER: We're waitin' for Brick an' Maggie to come in for this talk.

  MARGARET: Brother Man an' Mae have got a trick up their sleeves, an' if you don't go in there t' help Big Mama, y'know what I'm goin' to do—?

  BIG MAMA: Talk. Whispers! Whispers!

  [Looks out]

  Brick!...

  MARGARET [answering Big Mama's call]: Comin', Big Mama!

  [To Brick.]

  I'm goin' to take every dam' bottle on this place an' pitch it off th' levee into th' river!

  BIG MAMA: Never had this sort of atmosphere here before.

  MAE [sits above Big Mama on wicker seat]: Before what, Big Mama?

  BIG MAMA: This occasion. What's Brick an' Maggie doin' out there now?

  GOOPER [looks out]: They seem to be havin' some little altercation.

  BIG MAMA [taking a pill from pill box on chain at her wrist]: Give me a little somethin' to wash this tablet down with. Smell of burnt fireworks always makes me sick.

  [Mae crosses to bar to pour glass of water. Dr Baugh joins her. Gooper crosses to Reverend Tooker.]

  BRICK [to Maggie]: You're a live cat, aren't you?

  MARGARET: You're dam' right I am!

  BIG MAMA: Gooper, will y'please open that hall door—an' let some air circulate in this stiflin' room?

  [Gooper starts, but is restrained by Mae]

  MAE [crosses to Big Mama with water, sits]: Big Mama, I think we ought to keep that door closed till after we talk.

  BIG MAMA: I swan!

  [Drinks water. Washes down pill.]

  MAE: I just don't think we ought to take any chance of Big Daddy hearin' a word of this discussion.

  BIG MAMA [hands glass to Mae]: What discussion of what? Maggie! Brick! Nothin' is goin' to be said in th' house of Big Daddy Pollitt that he can't hear if he wants to!

  [Mae joins Gooper]

  BRICK: How long are you goin' to stand behind me, Maggie?

  MARGARET: Forever, if necessary.

  [Brick to gallery door.]

  BIG MAMA: Brick!

  [Mae rises, looks out]

  GOOPER: That boy's gone t' pieces—he's just gone t' pieces.

  DOCTOR BAUGH: Y'know, in my day they used to have somethin' they called the Keeley cure for drinkers.

  BIG MAMA: Shoot!

  DOCTOR BAUGH: But nowadays, I understand they take some kind of tablets that kill their taste for the stuff.

  GOOPER [turns to Dr Baugh]: Call 'em anti-bust tablets.

  BIG MAMA: Brick don't need to take nothin'. That boy is just broken up over Skipper's death. You know how poor Skipper died. They gave him a big, big dose of that sodium amytal stuff at his home an' then they called the ambulance an' give him another big, big dose of it at th' hospital an' that an' all the alcohol in his system fo' months an' months just proved too much for his heart an' his heart quit beatin'. I'm scared of needles! I'm more scared of a needle than th' knife—

  [Brick has entered the room to behind the wicker seat. He rests his hand on Big Mama's head. Gooper has moved a bit facing Big Mama.]
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