Spat on a hot tin roof

Is it significant that Barack Obama didn’t turn up for Anika Noni Rose’s black Maggie?

When the Broadway curtain rose on Anika Nomi Rose as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the hot-gumbo drama of Southern mendacity and sexual longing, two prime seats remained unoccupied.

They had been saved for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. It had seemed such an obvious cultural coming together: America's first black presidential prospect meeting the first black incarnation on Broadway of Tennessee Williams's quintessential southern belle. Obama was sure to show up. It might be significant that he didn't.

Rose, 36, who starred in the Motown biopic Dreamgirls and won a Tony for the 2004 musical Caroline, or Change, has so far met with mixed reviews.