This ‘Cat’ is too tame
For the AJC
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Much has been made of the conflicted soul of Tennessee Williams, who shaped his brooding males and hysterical females from the tortured raw material of his own life. His plays come ready-made with Southern Gothic clichés, and seem to sprout from a fetid environment that is part hothouse and part madhouse. So the one thing Tennessee Williams does not need is a show that plays up the freakiness of his characters.
Alas, the new production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” that opened at Georgia Shakespeare over the weekend is an uneven study of opposites that sometimes feels like a “Cat on a Hot Tin Mess.”
Daniel Thomas May and Courtney Patterson portray Brick and Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ at Georgia Shakespeare / Jennifer Hofstretter
THEATER REVIEW
"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"
Grade: C+
Through Aug. 1. In rotating repertory with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Titus Andronicus," opening July 10. $15-$45. Georgia Shakespeare, Oglethorpe University, Conant Performing Arts Center, 4484 Peachtree Road. 404-264-0020, gashakespeare.org.
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Directed by Jasson Minadakis, the three-act drama runs for three hours (including two intermissions) and has the promise of sizzle in the presence of Daniel Thomas May and Courtney Patterson, whose Brick and Maggie engage in a hissing, crutch-whacking game of sexual dysfunction that reverses the stereotypes of heterosexual couples everywhere. A fallen athlete with a broken ankle and a taste for liquor, he’s the one who is holding out.
Terrorized by Brick’s “no-neck monster” nieces and nephews, the two are sequestered inside the white-columned mansion of the Mississippi Delta’s largest plantation: “28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile.” It’s the occasion of Big Daddy Pollitt’s 65th birthday, and Maggie hopes to deliver the dying patriarch the best birthday present of all: a grandchild spawned by his favorite son.
It’s a loud and spirited affair, punctuated by the interruptions of children playing cowboys and Indians, spectacular fireworks and the sound of actors intent on giving their lungs a marathon workout. (Oddly enough, though, I had a little trouble hearing Patterson’s Maggie from time to time — could her voice just be tired? — and as much as I loved the softness of Mike Post’s lighting and the sheer opulence of Kat Conley’s set, I had trouble seeing the actors’ faces at the top of the show.)
For this Pulitzer Prize-winning play, first produced on Broadway in 1955, Williams creates a tale that echoes Shakespeare and classical mythology. The relationship between the sensitive, defensive Brick and his recently departed friend Skipper has whiffs of Patroclus and Achilles, and Big Daddy (Tim McDonough) is as rich as Croesus and as arrogant as Donald Trump.
Aside from the themes of alcoholism, sibling rivalry, spousal abuse and so on, Williams was concerned with the bottled-up nature of the human heart. The women may be compulsive talkers, but the men can’t connect. “Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?” Big Daddy says to Brick. And, indeed, the long-winded play seems to take forever to get to the crucial conversation.
Patterson doesn’t quite seem to muster the energy to make for a truly pulverizing Maggie. She’s just kinda so-so. May, for his part, makes for a mesmerizing and magnetic Brick, switching from vulnerable to volatile with quicksilver timing, haunted by the ghosts of the plantation’s previous owners — two men who slept together in this very room —and the innuendo of his hectoring wife and father.
As Big Mama, a sentimental Southern matriarch who must weather her husband’s attacks and her children’s disappointments, Megan McFarland gives a fascinating and original performance — capturing the husky growl of an old woman who wants to please and pamper her husband and sons, and soldiers on even after Big Daddy’s vicious and hard-to-stomach attacks.
My big problem with this production, and there’s no getting around it, is McDonough’s Big Daddy. Lurching and lumbering onstage, he looks alarmingly like Fred Gwynne, can’t muster a credible Southern accent and pretty much sabotages every scene he’s in. Don’t get me wrong. McDonough is a delightful comic actor who frequently uses his quirkiness and towering physique to terrific effect. But he’s just not right for this role.
Williams’ plays are rich, juicy and weird enough in their own right — without adding layers of eccentricities that bolster the Gothic stereotypes. This is a long-winded and difficult play — a potboiler, really — and the Act 2 confrontation between Big Daddy and Brick must hold its own with the searing dialogue that opens the story. But with a toned-down Maggie and an off-kilter Big Daddy, this “Cat” never really hisses and claws.
