CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Joe Rosario
Theatre at St Clements
Reviewed by David Spencer
Briefly taking a survey of my theatergoing past, I was surprised to realize how many times I’ve seen Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof…which, as I think about that further, means how many times I’ve found the productions ultimately forgettable. And that, looking over my reviews, seems to be because, for all the potential heat of the play, sexual and situational, the productions have been mild.
There was, in fact, only one production that rocked me, my first, and not because it was my first—that just magnified how much of an event it was. Way back during the last years in which the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut was still thriving—they mounted the first major revival, directed by Michael Kahn; it hit so hard that it transferred directly to Broadway in 1974. It heralded the first time the play was produced with Williams’ unexpurgated script, its language a bit rougher, its ambiguities about repressed homosexuality a bit less ambiguous…and it featured powerhouse performances; in particular those of Elizabeth Ashley, among the most aggressively sensual and sexual actresses of her generation, as Maggie the Cat; and Fred Gwynne—exploding out of the Herman Munster sitcom image that had dogged him—as a bravura Big Daddy. And if Keir Dullea wasn’t the world’s most exciting Brick, he had enough going on to be a proper foil for the other two and hold up the play when it rested on his shoulders. I think perhaps that was because he did indeed look like a former hometown football hero, and, making use of his relatively narrower palate, wielded that exterior blandness as if it were a mask over his seething rage.
All that said, I may also wind up remembering the current revival at the Theatre at St. Clements because it is that spectacularly wrong-headed. Much of the time, it seems like an energized and enthusiastic community theatre production with the most appropriate actors you can find from the local talent pool giving it their best.
Sonora Mizuno as Maggie is certainly attractive but she’s not voluptuous of body or, more importantly, spirit. She seems testy rather than tempestuous and she works hard at modulating her long monologues; you can sometimes even follow how she’s checkmarked the points she wants to make via gesture and inflection.
Matt de Rogatis is a pent up and angry Brick in the manner of a rap star constrained from performing. This is (oddly) not a direct criticism, because—an extra bonus I didn’t mention—the setting has been updated to a contemporary setting at least as advanced as handset phones rather than wired landlines, and a number of other touches that say we’re decades ahead of the original, but don’t actually commit to an era—so Mr. de Rogatis is operating well within the trappings, in a raw sense. Beyond that, though, the performance doesn’t, unlike that of Ms. Mizuno, seem conceived so much as unevenly impulsed and emotionally repetitive. But I’m not sure I blame him overmuch for that either. A point to which I’ll return.
And then there’s Christian Jules Le Blanc as Big Daddy. The actor, a talented fellow, is not very big; he is, in fact, shorter than de Rogatis’s Brick. This of course means le Blanc has to play big, so we might intuit why he got his nickname despite his stature (irony!), and the problem there is, bereft of the power conferred by actual size, he doesn’t get to relax into the power of softness or understatement. He has to keep workin’ it; and he does. And after a while, it’s exhausting.
And then there’s Alison Fraser as Big Mama. Likewise not a physically big or dowdy woman, as the text suggests. Which is less important than the fact that Ms Fraser, without needing to do anything to make it so, indeed, without being able to quash it, is inherently sexy. She has lost none of her allure nor her backbone—about 20 years ago, she would have been an ideal Maggie—so what her Big Mama can never be, by dint of simple alchemy between actress and role, is pathetical. In the play as originally conceived, Big Mama is past her prime and Big Daddy’s barbs at her should seem unutterably cruel. Now Big Daddy’s barbs sound mean, all right, but Big Mama takes it with exasperation and a degree of pushback that has an unmistakable subtext of, “Oh, why don’t you just go fuck yourself?”
All of which brings us to the direction of Joe Rosario. Not having any Inside info, I can’t make assertions about the rehearsal process, nor how symbiotic or guiding his work with the actors may have been; but for me as an observer of the finished product, he seemed hardly present. The blocking is ragged, and the performances aren’t built so much as given to periodic outbursts that emphasize the character’s particular trope: Brick’s moodiness, Big Daddy’s bluster, Big Mama’s frustration, Maggie’s…whatever the heck that is.
None of which is to say that you can’t experiment with a contemporary classic. Ivo Van Hove is a hit-and-miss practitioner, but at least he’s always trying to get at something. This Cat doesn’t appear to be getting at anything other than messing about—enough to offset expectations, not enough to warrant the offset—for its own sake. And that makes for far less hot tin roofery than a warmed over noodling.