The Nuffield Theatre Company Presents TIGER TAIL, Beginning 9/27

The Nuffield Theatre Company will present the British premiere of Tiger Tail, Tennessee Williams' own stage version of his controversial film, Baby Doll.

TIGER TAIL, Tennessee Williams' adaptation of his film Baby Doll, is a steamy, sexy play set in the Deep South which seethes with desire while examining what it is to be human, and to be attracted to another. The creative team is led by Artistic Director of the Nuffield, Patrick Sandford, who scored success with A Streetcar Named Desire.

Archie Lee Meighan has fallen on hard times since 'the wop from Sicily' Silva Vaccaro set up a competing cotton gin and siphoned off all his business. After Archie deliberately torches Vaccaro's cotton gin, his wife, twenty-year-old Baby Doll becomes a sexual pawn in the commercial and sexual battle between her hated older husband and the young, bronzed cotton manager. Adding dramatically to the tension is the revelation that Archie, and Baby Doll's, nuptial agreement states that the marriage can only be consummated on her twentieth birthday, which just happens to be three days away…

TIGER TAIL is the play version of the 1956 film Baby Doll, and a radical reworking by Tennessee Williams of his short play '27 Wagons Full of Cotton', which was first produced in 1946, as part of his 'Mississippi Delta' collection - plays concerning the lives of people living, and working, in and around that particular area of the mighty river. When first screened the film caused a furore. Time Magazine said it was 'just possibly the dirtiest American – made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited. The movie was also condemned by the Catholic League of Decency and by Cardinal Spellman, from his pulpit in New York, ensuring twenty million Catholics gave it a wide berth.

The cast for TIGER TAIL is Ed Cooper Clarke (The Madness of George III, Theatre Royal Bath and on tour in 2011, and The Reluctant Debutante, Theatre Royal Bath) as Silva Vaccaro, Owen Oakeshott (Antony and Cleopatra, Nuffield Theatre; Copenhagen, Royal Lyceum Edinburgh; Roots, Manchester Royal Exchange; Market Boy, Royal Hunt Of The Sun, National Theatre) as Archie Lee Meighan and recent Guildhall graduate, Rose Reynolds as Baby Doll.

Others in the cast are Jack Benjamin as Rock, Nicola Blackman (West End credits include: Little Shop Of Horrors, Mutiny!, Godspell, Barnum and Destry Rides Again for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award) as Ruby Lightfoot, Janet Henfrey, best known for playing the schoolteacher in the 1986 Dennis Potter serial The Singing Detective as Aunt Rose Comfort, and Matt Devereaux as Sherriff Coglan.

More Articles by This Author...