Thursday 3 December 2009

Modern Classics in the negative

From the Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - not exactly Taylor and Newman

I see that some brainwashed politically correct twit has seen fit to recast the famous Tennessee Williams play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof about sexual tensions within a rich Southern family with an all black cast - WOW! how innovative huh?

In the London production the roles of Brick and Maggie (the cat) made famous by Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in the 1958 movie, are played by the seriously over employed Adrian Lester (the little black chap with one facial expression who has appeared in everything from “Primary Colours” to “The Hustle”) and American Actress called Sanaa Latham. Meanwhile, James Earl Jones take on the role of Big Daddy.

One can just imagine the screams of outrage were a production of for instance A Raisin in the Sun or even Porgy and Bess to open with an all white cast (I say “open” as it would be unlikely to make it past the first night without the theatre being burnt down). However, it does give us the opportunity to speculate as to how this treatment might effect certain other plays and movies.

A remake of “Skin” perhaps might feature a little white girl born to a black couple, they had better not locate that in Tanzania had they?, the sangomas would have her for muti within a week!!! (there are things worse than white racism)

That infamous old liberal cringe-fest “Guess who's coming to Dinner” could be interesting with a racial make-over (“Oh she's marrying that nice Welsh Doctor”!)

However, I think my favourite option would be to take revenge on that seminal white guilt sufferer Harper Lee and recast her turgid “To Kill a Mocking Bird” with an innocent white defendant in a town full of black bigots, now that would be racial equality and a slice of modern American realism.

Are there any other Films books or plays which readers would like to see given the "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" treatment?.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't wait to see an all-white production of "Porgy & Bess". The critics would be apoplectic! Some of the dialect would have to be altered, though, no doubt....

Actually, it's intriguing that such a classic of the "black experience in America" was written by a white Jew, George Gershwin, whose real name was Jacob Gershovitz. (Did you know about the British commentator who is said to have praised a work by George Gershwin "and his lovely wife Ira"? Ira, as we all should know, was his BROTHER.)

It would be fun to see a "big white buck" helping to build a chapel for a gaggle of twittering black nuns in a race-reversed "Lilies of the Field".

We've already seen black opera singer Leontyne Price play a Japanese geisha in "Madame Butterfly" -- not to mention Chinese actresses playing them in "Memoirs of a Geisha", or Japanese James Shigeta and Myoshi Umeki playing Chinese in "Flower Drum Song"....

ceorl said...

'In the heat of the night' with the roles reversed may cause some reation from liberals. I'm certain the BBC would be happy to produce it.