I didn’t see that staging, but I was drawn by the high-low direction that Ashford’s career seemed to be taking, by his Rob Marshall-like interest in how quality rubs up against pasties and rouge. In 2009, he switched gears to direct, at London’s intimate Donmar Warehouse, a celebrated production of Williams’s 1947 landmark play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” starring Rachel Weisz. The fifty-three-year-old Ashford made his name on Broadway as a choreographer, working on such shows as “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (2002)-for which he won a Tony Award-and “Cry-Baby” (2008). But rehabilitation can be slow, especially if, like me, you tend to replay the catastrophe over and over in your mind, wondering how it happened. There are plump beds, handsome doctors, and no actors. In this infirmary, pundits are wheeled around by nurses in lovely white uniforms and starched caps. The Theatre Critics’ Hospital is a nice place to recover from the trauma that is Rob Ashford’s staging of Tennessee Williams’s 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (at the Richard Rodgers). Cat’s cradle: Scarlett Johansson, as Margaret, in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Illustration by Jeanne Detallante.

Hot buttered biscuit