I'm a fan of the original movie with Liz Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift and I knew that the 1959 film was very different from the stage version. This version with Natasha Richardson, Maggie Smith and Rob Lowe seems to stick closer to the original text. The three leads are amazing but the supporting cast seemed to lack direction, grasp the severity of the situation at hand or even know how to really REact to situations. The man playing George (Richard E. Grant) had two modes, loud and frantic and quiet and frantic. When mad he would make the same arm gestures over and over again and showed absolutely no character development. Several times during temper tantrums, he paid no attention to where he was going and almost fell over parts of the set. His mother Ms. Holly (played by Moira Redmond) came off as being not only a ditz, but a drunk one at that and stumbled over many lines. Ms. Foxhill played to absurdity by Gillian Raine was painful to watch. Richardson and Smith were fantastic playing off one another and Lowe was greatly underused. Tennessee Williams wrote many tragic figures into his plays and stories and Catherine, the one in Suddenly, Last Summer was based in part on events that led to his (Tennessee's) sisters lobotomy. It takes a special type of talent and adaptation to pull off Tennessee Williams and the supporting cast missed the mark by such a wide margin that it was difficult to focus on the fantastic performances of the three leads.
Review of Suddenly, Last Summer
