While not master storyteller Tennessee Williams' best play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is still an American classic. The story of haunted Brick, catty Maggie, and powerful Big Daddy is as thick as the air in a midsummer bayou, and filled with sweltering sexual tension. For this play to work, each of the actors in these roles needs to intricately overplay and underplay their fears and desires. One slip, and the lovely tension becomes excruciating. While the production offered by Actors' Renaissance Theatre appears headed for disaster by the first of the two intermissions, Big Daddy comes in and saves the day.
Set on the Mississippi Delta at the palatial plantation of the Pharaoh-like Big Daddy, Maggie and Brick are living in a sexless and childless marriage, an uneasy truce after Maggie mentioned the unspoken taboo of Brick and his best friend Skipper's relationship. Big Daddy is terminal, and Brick's older brother Gooper intends to take over the plantation. Maggie won't allow this, as Big Daddy and Big Mama do everything in their power to stop Brick's slide into alcoholism so that they can hand the keys of the kingdom to their former football hero prodigal son.
Director James K. Barnard has set this play in a time that seems more '80s than anything else, but he has wisely opened up the production with implication and the ethereal to balance the gut-level text and situations. His actors float through this space, and collide with each other in wild pile-ups. This only becomes true, though, after Williams' lengthy exposition is finally established.
In the first of the three acts, Ashley J. Barnard plays the sensuous, desperate Maggie as though she were an auctioneer. She delivers her dialogue with a passable southern accent, but in a New York minute. Because she establishes her character with such quick pacing, and with so little power, she almost misses the chance to play the sinewy sultriness of Maggie. Peter Covitz, whose Brick spends more time reacting than acting, seems more dazed than angered. By the end of the first act, audience members maybe tempted to avoid what could be almost two more hours of this. Don't. The overwrought pace of the first act is made up for by the strength of what follows.
That's when the supporting cast, lead by Robert Strupp's crassly regal Big Daddy, take over. Once he barrels into the room, and fills the space with equal amounts of mass and girth, everyone follows his lead. Meandering Brick becomes focused, Lorena Royce's fussy Big Mama becomes defensive, and hesitant Maggie becomes equal amounts of wounded kitty and jungle cat. Mr. Strupp is the center that the first act so desperately demands, and he keeps his hand firmly on the clutch until the moment the world recreates itself near the end of the third act.
Ms. Royce gets her moment to shine, taking control when threatened and showing her strength, and Drew Kallen is a subtler shade of backstabbing as the equally wronged and wronging older brother, Gooper. As his cretin wife, Mae, Kim Wagner plays her annoying character well. Two daughters of their brood, played by Brittany Frisell and Kristen Slusser, are ably handled. Besides the first act fiascoes, the greatest disappointments are Richard Wells as Doc Baugh, and Kyle Hallstrom as Reverend Tooker, both of whom peer around the edges of the stage, looking as if they'll be struck with newspapers at any given moment.
Mr. Barnard's great concept for the play is reflected in his very impressive set design, which uses minimalism to express the max. Bob Nelson's lighting and sound designs are also well done, as they add to the minimalist tone while the lighting captures the quicksilver moods perfectly.
If there were only a way to cut through the expansive set-up of the play, giving the audience more time to enjoy the group dynamic before delighting in the individual machinations of the couples. It's not easy to say how to do this, but it's definitely not handled well here. Fortunately, the evening takes a right turn before tripping over its hardest of hurdles.
Production Details:
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee
Williams
Actors' Renaissance Theatre
The Tempe Performing Arts Center, Tempe
(480) 632-0409
September 29th - October 14th, 2000