Scarlett Johansson plays Maggie the Cat in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof on Broadway, but financial success is not guaranteed in a relatively poor box office season.
Johansson plays the frustrated debutante Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams's 1955 stage classic of sexual desire in the American South.
Johansson is now 28, Elizabeth Taylor was a mere 25 when she played Maggie the Cat in the 1958 film, starring Paul Newman as her husband Brick and Marlon Brando as Big Daddy.
This Broadway production stars Benjamin Walker as Maggie's husband and Irish actor Ciarán Hinds in the Brando role.
The show opened on Thursday at the Richard Rodgers Theatre for a ten-week run. However, Scarlett's appearance is by no means a guaranteed financial success.
New York theatre-goers have not exactly been racing to see productions featuring well-known actors. Much was expected from Katie Holmes (Dawson's Creek) as the star of a new comedy Dead Accounts, which concerned a family reunion. But the play closed seven weeks early, and attendances were very poor. Another Broadway production, Picnic, starring Ellen Burstyn remains the lowest-grossing show on Broadway.
The only real celebrity pull on Broadway this season is Al Pacino, who is earning a minimum of $125,000 a week playing a real estate salesman in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross.
This is the highest-grossing non-musical on Broadway, taking in over $1.2m on the final week of 2012. Yet discounted tickets for Glengarry have been available at a booth in Times Square, according to The Guardian.
Nevertheless, Scarlett has reason to be pretty happy with the success of the production so far - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof enjoyed brisk preview sales and in the last four weeks the show has sold approximately 9,000 tickets a week, at an average price of about $90.
