Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 25 June 2016
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, they say, was Tennessee Williams's favourite creation, and for it he won the Pulitzer Prize For Drama in 1955. He wrote The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire in the decade before, so he had some good practice. Like these plays, and amongst the most famous by his contemporary, Arthur Miller - Death Of A Salesman, and All My Sons - the playwrights force family members to confront a heap of issues in a short period of time, making for excruciating tension.
Set in a sweltering Southern mansion near the banks of the Mississippi, patriarch Big Daddy's two sons and their families gather for his 65th birthday. Amongst his presents, but hidden from him and Big Mama, is a terminal cancer diagnosis. While the kids are feuding over the legacy, favourite son, Brick, and wife Maggie struggle with life after Skipper, an unseen character in this drama with whom Brick denies having a homosexual relation. Big Daddy and Brick have a lengthy heart-to-heart. The play is a huge challenge to actors given the raw emotions generated by crass denigration and emotional surprise that must be sustained through lengthy dialogues, some of which apparently were pared back.
Southern hospitality abounds in the delightful bedroom of Brick and Maggie imagined by set designer and director Barry Hill. You can feel the oppressive heat only relieved by slight breezes through the French doors opening onto the balcony. Maggie is frustrated by Brick's rejection of her sexuality and is like a cat on a hot tin roof, and the success of any production largely, and certainly early in the piece, depends on achieving a near unbearable sense of sexual frustration through unrequited desire. Anita Pipprell and Director Hill didn't quite have the train pull into the station on that one. Brick, as Joshua Coldwell played him, was an impenetrable brick. While Coldwell looked every inch the ex-footballer, Brick's scowl and sullenness was unbroken from curtain rise to fall, even after downing most of a bottle of bourbon. A more difficult role is that of Big Mama, whose ceaseless excoriation by Big Daddy ought to generate waves of sympathy, but Jude Brennan was not able to lead us there. Russell Starke's Big Daddy commanded the stage as he provided a master class in the actor's tools of voice, bearing and gesture, showing, for example, that a flick of the hand could be as effectively dismissive as a slurry of words, once the characterisation has been firmly established. But that was not enough - this production largely unfulfilled the promise of the play.
David Grybowski
When: 23 Jun to 2 Jul
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: www.adelaiderep.com
