Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Slice of life

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof<br /> Novello The Stefan Golaszewski Plays<br /> Bush

issue 12 December 2009

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Novello

The Stefan Golaszewski Plays
Bush

Revolutionary republics, like the USA and Soviet Russia, never really get rid of royalty. They just appoint surrogates. America’s yearning for icons has accorded the actor James Earl Jones a rank somewhere between Richard the Lionheart and John the Baptist. The producers of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof approached him on bended knee (‘You don’t audition James Earl Jones,’ gushed one) and begged for the royal assent. Good King James was probably giggling behind his hand as he boomed out an affirmation with the famous Darth Vader rumble. I bet he was thrilled to smithereens to be offered a lead role on Broadway as he approached his 80th year. His voice is a marvel. If it were a beauty spot it would teem with artists and photographers trying to immortalise its rocky complexities and echoing caverns, its bosky resonances and foresty groves.

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