Kathleen Turner Returns as ‘Maggie’ in ‘Hot Tin Roof’

Actress Kathleen Turner said Tuesday she’s thrilled to be back on stage, particularly in a role she’s yearned to play for years.

Turner is starring as Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama began a two-week run Tuesday at Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center. After that, it goes to Boston, Philadelphia and then Broadway.

“The challenge is in the material, not in doing stage . . . versus film per se,” Turner said at a news conference. Turner said she always had intended to portray Williams’ Maggie, a beautiful Southern woman who pines for a husband who shuns her.

“It’s quite delightful to play her. It’s so alive to me to always be thinking. She changes so fast and thinks so fast. I like the level of aliveness.”

Appearing with Turner in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” are Charles Durning, Polly Holliday and Daniel Hugh Kelly.

The current production, which is Williams’ original version, is quite unlike the altered 1955-56 Broadway production starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Ben Gazzara and Burl Ives. It’s also nothing like the 1958 film with Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Ives.

Turner said she purposely avoided seeing the earlier productions, except for the 1958 film.

“I make a point of trying not to see roles that I will probably do because I don’t want any other images in my mind. I want to create it fresh,” she said.

Turner, 35, a native of Missouri, started in theater but it was movies that made her a star. She’s appeared in more than a dozen films, including “Body Heat,” “Romancing the Stone,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “The Accidental Tourist.”