Scarlett Johansson sizzles on stage in A Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Scarlett Johansson had been off sick for a couple of days and the first night she returned to play the smouldering Maggie in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof there was Meryl Streep sitting in the front of the stalls.

Jessica Lange was on an aisle; Anna Wintour and Kelly Reilly were close by. But that’s New York for you. I often spot Oscar and Tony winners, or famous writers and directors, in the audience at plays in New York.

Now I think about it, though, it’s mostly Meryl. I like the way she stays in her seat during intervals, so as not to attract too much attention. And I love it when something makes her laugh.

Sizzling: Scarlett Johansson has returned to the stage as a smouldering Maggie in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

She was certainly tickled when Scarlett’s Maggie kept referring to some off-stage brats as ‘no-neck monsters’. Scarlett delivered the line with such delicious relish that I, too, was amused.

And Meryl was riveted by the on-stage confrontations between Scarlett and Benjamin Walker (as Maggie’s ‘crippled’ husband Brick) and the Act 2 session between Brick and Big Daddy, played by Ciaran Hinds.

The Tennessee Williams play is previewing at the Richard Rodgers Theatre and was still being trimmed before critics get to see it over the weekend and early next week.

Maggie the Cat is such a great role. I remember seeing Elizabeth Taylor in the film when I was a kid and I could never fathom why Paul Newman, as the drunken Brick, didn’t desire her.

Scarlett Johansson pictured left as Maggie next to Benjamin Walker who plays her ‘crippled’ husband Brick and, pictured right, are Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in the 1958 film of A Cat On A Tin Roof

Of course, I know the answer now and as the play’s director Rob Ashford noted: ‘There are no happy endings for those two.’

But as played by Scarlett and Benjamin Walker, both good lookin’, you can see why Maggie desperately clings to the hope Brick might stay off the booze just for one night so they can hook up.

The heartbreak is that Scarlett’s Maggie knows, deep down, the truth of that situation.

Walker, by the way, is Meryl’s son-in-law. He’s married to her daughter Mamie Gummer.

She was in the stalls, too, on Tuesday night, along with dad Don Gummer and other family members and friends.

They all met up afterwards at a theatre hang-out on 46th Street.

Now it’s Judi Dench in Wonderland

Judi Dench has always been a big West End draw, but with the billion-dollar global success of Bond film Skyfall, she’s hotter than ever.

She stars with Skyfall colleague Ben Whishaw in Peter And Alice, a new play by John Logan (who was one of the writers on Skyfall), which begins rehearsals on January 28 and performances at the Noel Coward Theatre on March 9.

‘Judi’s a hot, hot star. But she’s up for doing a play and loves being part of a company,’ said Michael Grandage, who will direct her in Peter And Alice.