The Irish Classical Theatre Company's much anticipated production of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, Tennessee Williams' masterpiece of Southern dynastic succession, directed by Greg Natale, opened at the Andrews Theatre (Thursday, January 13).
Williams was the great poet among American playwrights. His language is truly beautiful, his phrases flowing and his dialogue can be hypnotic. He wastes no words, even when he is repetitious, (and he is, often). Each word has a deeper meaning, a coded context, a second or third layer guiding the actor and audience to the place where one sees the heart of the tragedy that drives the play.
Much of the symbolism is owing to the fact that most of the material simply was not directly addressed in the mid-nineteen fifties, and thus Williams, in subterfuge, was able to tear open taboo doors. In this regard, Williams was not merely poetic, but prophetic. Social issues barely whispered in mid-century America are now shouted out in an unending babel: "don't ask, don't tell", spousal abuse (both physical and verbal,) marital infidelity and women's liberation (sexual and economic), and not least, the inevitable corruption that comes with the concentration of great wealth.
Williams topics must have shocked his contemporary theatre audiences, and if one sees the sanitized 1958 film version of CAT, starring Burl Ives, Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, one sees clear evidence that the most challenging aspects of the play were left out, or were so watered down as to be meaningless.
The film, nevertheless, had heart. And, at least for viewers of a certain age, the performances of the movie stars set the standard, for better or worse, for all subsequent productions. Burl Ives gave a stomping, trumpeting performance. He was rotund, bellicose and offensive, but Ives' Big Daddy ultimately revealed the vital sense of loss, defeat and disappointment upon which the play sinks or swims.
The ICTC cast is a study in contrast with the past. Actor Dan Walker is big too, but in a vertical, not a horizontal sense. If Ives was the classic charging pachyderm, Walker is the roaring lion. Lithe and muscular, Walker prowls the stage, playing with his prey, batting them senseless before delivering the coup de grace. This is not your daddy's Big Daddy.
Walker's is an impressive performance, one can easily believe that this is a man who clawed his way to the top. While Big Daddy may pay lip-service to the niceties, even the necessities of social "mendacity" --- Church going, marital bliss, the blessing of grandchildren (I had a neighbor once who muttered that grandchildren were "highly over-rated ") --- this Big Daddy is driven solely by self-interest.
An unfortunate by-product of this lionesque portrayal is that one is hard-pressed to believe that Big Daddy is really suffering from a terminal illness, the occasional groans and side-grabbing do not conceal the fact that on his worst day, Mr. Walker does not look like a guy who is about to keel over, and Big Daddy's impending death is the big tent for this circus.
That aside, here is an eminently watchable and engaging performance, strong, lucid and certainly unique.
All the performances are highly charged and well executed. Some choices made in this production aim the characters in a direction not quite charted in the text. Ms. Diane Curley as Maggie the Cat, for example, is lovely to behold, sensual and calculating, she is the ultimate survivor. Born of genteel circumstances, she has become a chameleon, one-part charming southern belle, one part vamp as she tries to coax her inebriated husband out of his stupor and into the battle for Big Daddy's estate.
Williams has created a pantheon of leading ladies, providing some of the richest roles in American Theatre. Maggie is outstanding not only as a harbinger of women's rights to come, marital, political and economic, but as a blatantly sexual being. Ms. Curley's Maggie is cunning and self-assured, her sexual prowess is far more a means to an end than reflective of any biological need. Williams certainly meant his cat on a hot tin roof to be a cat in heat, literally. In that, I think, at least on opening night, this Maggie misses the pure animal lust which sets her apart, and, in part, drives her ambition and the ultimate tragedy of the play. Nevertheless, this is a thinking Maggie the Cat, one who delivers the goods and lands on her feet.
Neal Moeller, as Brick, plays a very good drunk. You know the type, cool and steady even in the midst of the most astounding binge. Brick is in a bubble, numbing the pain of his shame, which is a mix of sexual guilt, betrayal, abandonment and his lost youth. The love that dare not speak its name really did not speak its name in the mid 1950's, but Williams comes mighty close. (Was the word "queer" ever used in a major American play up to that time?) Moeller's Brick is so insular, it is startling when he pops out for a fleeting humane moment.
The role of Brick offers one of the most challenging in modern drama. Brick maintains an outwardly calm surface while the most soul- wrenching memories burn inside. This dynamic can create barriers for one's fellow actors on stage. How does one relate to someone who refuses to relate? Moeller's Brick does connect, however, when it counts, and it is especially apparent in the Act II confrontation with Big Daddy.
If you would like to see an actor totally, 100% "all-in" committed to her role, come see Sheila McCarthy as Big Mama. Better known for her accomplishments in musical theatre, Ms. McCarthy blows on stage like a gulf hurricane. This Big Mama commands your attention. She bellows and cajoles and hoots. Her emotions erupt in unending rivers of speech. The comedy is high, but so too is the drama.
Tennessee Williams is like Shakespeare in that, every time I see one of his plays, I see some new aspect I had never caught before. Big Mama's whole world revolves around Big Daddy and her family. In Ms. McCarthy's performance, for the first time, I noticed an individual in Big Mama, someone I had yet to see.
Big Daddy's about to die without ever having made a will. This "oversight" drives the play, as stakeholders plot to wrest control of the plantation in a post-Big Daddy world. At one point, after she discovers the truth about Big Daddy's condition, Big Mama rejects her son Gooper's designs on the estate, and, as she sets the record straight, she speaks forcefully as "Big Daddy's talkin'." She literally talks as Big Daddy. Coupled with Big Daddy's accusation that Big Mama was already trying to control matters, it occurred to me then that if Big Daddy dies intestate, it will be Big Mama who, as the widow, will take the lion's share, if not all of the estate.
Abused and ignored, McCarthy's Big Mama reveals a just slightly veiled perception that, as things stand, she will have the last word. Thought to be a fool by almost everyone, Big Mama here is nobody's fool. Terrific job.
Also terrific in tough roles, are Kelly Ferguson-Moore as daughter-in-law Mae and Eric Rawski as the hapless son, Gooper. It has been suggested that these characters suffer the worst as the butt of Williams' social satire. Mae is a clucking hen, wrangling her brood and brooding over her turf. Rawski's Gooper looks for all the world like a Glenn Beck wannabe, with a matching talent for double talk. Both actors succeed in creating mutli-dimensional individuals who, in concert, offer the perfect portrait of the "mendacity" so central to the play's success.
Doug Crane and Jim Maloy round things out nicely as the avaricious Reverend Tooker and the venerable Doctor Baugh. And not least, a special mention for Carol McGuire, who portrayed the granddaughter Trixie. Miss McGuire was a delight every time she took to the stage, and provided a much needed breath of fresh air in an otherwise sultry Mississippi evening.
This is an excellent production, it moves deliberately and forcefully. Williams' language gets a good work-out here.
This production is helped enormously by the excellent technical support. The set, designed by Ron Schwartz is impressive. At first glance I thought the huge bedroom suite resembled nothing so much as a Pharaoh's tomb, ornate but quite lifeless, with everything a Delta King would need in the afterlife, and thus much in keeping with the biblical overtones inherent in the play.
The music, and sound effects by Tom Makar strike the perfect chords for this tropical, languid and decaying world. And Brian Cavanagh's lighting also adds the perfect mood. The costumes, by Dixon Reynolds, are rich and Hair & Make-up designer Susan Drozd does an impeccable job achieving the look of the Eisenhower era.
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, directed by ICTC Associate Director Greg Natale, through February 6, 2011.
www.irishclassicaltheatre.com
Images: Carol McGuire who plays Trixie with Diane Curley, Neal Moeller and Sheila McCarthy as Big Mama. Photos are by Gene Witkowski
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Williams was the great poet among American playwrights. His language is truly beautiful, his phrases flowing and his dialogue can be hypnotic. He wastes no words, even when he is repetitious, (and he is, often). Each word has a deeper meaning, a coded context, a second or third layer guiding the actor and audience to the place where one sees the heart of the tragedy that drives the play.
Much of the symbolism is owing to the fact that most of the material simply was not directly addressed in the mid-nineteen fifties, and thus Williams, in subterfuge, was able to tear open taboo doors. In this regard, Williams was not merely poetic, but prophetic. Social issues barely whispered in mid-century America are now shouted out in an unending babel: "don't ask, don't tell", spousal abuse (both physical and verbal,) marital infidelity and women's liberation (sexual and economic), and not least, the inevitable corruption that comes with the concentration of great wealth.
Williams topics must have shocked his contemporary theatre audiences, and if one sees the sanitized 1958 film version of CAT, starring Burl Ives, Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, one sees clear evidence that the most challenging aspects of the play were left out, or were so watered down as to be meaningless.
The film, nevertheless, had heart. And, at least for viewers of a certain age, the performances of the movie stars set the standard, for better or worse, for all subsequent productions. Burl Ives gave a stomping, trumpeting performance. He was rotund, bellicose and offensive, but Ives' Big Daddy ultimately revealed the vital sense of loss, defeat and disappointment upon which the play sinks or swims.
The ICTC cast is a study in contrast with the past. Actor Dan Walker is big too, but in a vertical, not a horizontal sense. If Ives was the classic charging pachyderm, Walker is the roaring lion. Lithe and muscular, Walker prowls the stage, playing with his prey, batting them senseless before delivering the coup de grace. This is not your daddy's Big Daddy.
Walker's is an impressive performance, one can easily believe that this is a man who clawed his way to the top. While Big Daddy may pay lip-service to the niceties, even the necessities of social "mendacity" --- Church going, marital bliss, the blessing of grandchildren (I had a neighbor once who muttered that grandchildren were "highly over-rated ") --- this Big Daddy is driven solely by self-interest.
An unfortunate by-product of this lionesque portrayal is that one is hard-pressed to believe that Big Daddy is really suffering from a terminal illness, the occasional groans and side-grabbing do not conceal the fact that on his worst day, Mr. Walker does not look like a guy who is about to keel over, and Big Daddy's impending death is the big tent for this circus.
That aside, here is an eminently watchable and engaging performance, strong, lucid and certainly unique.
All the performances are highly charged and well executed. Some choices made in this production aim the characters in a direction not quite charted in the text. Ms. Diane Curley as Maggie the Cat, for example, is lovely to behold, sensual and calculating, she is the ultimate survivor. Born of genteel circumstances, she has become a chameleon, one-part charming southern belle, one part vamp as she tries to coax her inebriated husband out of his stupor and into the battle for Big Daddy's estate.
Williams has created a pantheon of leading ladies, providing some of the richest roles in American Theatre. Maggie is outstanding not only as a harbinger of women's rights to come, marital, political and economic, but as a blatantly sexual being. Ms. Curley's Maggie is cunning and self-assured, her sexual prowess is far more a means to an end than reflective of any biological need. Williams certainly meant his cat on a hot tin roof to be a cat in heat, literally. In that, I think, at least on opening night, this Maggie misses the pure animal lust which sets her apart, and, in part, drives her ambition and the ultimate tragedy of the play. Nevertheless, this is a thinking Maggie the Cat, one who delivers the goods and lands on her feet.
Neal Moeller, as Brick, plays a very good drunk. You know the type, cool and steady even in the midst of the most astounding binge. Brick is in a bubble, numbing the pain of his shame, which is a mix of sexual guilt, betrayal, abandonment and his lost youth. The love that dare not speak its name really did not speak its name in the mid 1950's, but Williams comes mighty close. (Was the word "queer" ever used in a major American play up to that time?) Moeller's Brick is so insular, it is startling when he pops out for a fleeting humane moment.The role of Brick offers one of the most challenging in modern drama. Brick maintains an outwardly calm surface while the most soul- wrenching memories burn inside. This dynamic can create barriers for one's fellow actors on stage. How does one relate to someone who refuses to relate? Moeller's Brick does connect, however, when it counts, and it is especially apparent in the Act II confrontation with Big Daddy.
If you would like to see an actor totally, 100% "all-in" committed to her role, come see Sheila McCarthy as Big Mama. Better known for her accomplishments in musical theatre, Ms. McCarthy blows on stage like a gulf hurricane. This Big Mama commands your attention. She bellows and cajoles and hoots. Her emotions erupt in unending rivers of speech. The comedy is high, but so too is the drama.
Tennessee Williams is like Shakespeare in that, every time I see one of his plays, I see some new aspect I had never caught before. Big Mama's whole world revolves around Big Daddy and her family. In Ms. McCarthy's performance, for the first time, I noticed an individual in Big Mama, someone I had yet to see.
Big Daddy's about to die without ever having made a will. This "oversight" drives the play, as stakeholders plot to wrest control of the plantation in a post-Big Daddy world. At one point, after she discovers the truth about Big Daddy's condition, Big Mama rejects her son Gooper's designs on the estate, and, as she sets the record straight, she speaks forcefully as "Big Daddy's talkin'." She literally talks as Big Daddy. Coupled with Big Daddy's accusation that Big Mama was already trying to control matters, it occurred to me then that if Big Daddy dies intestate, it will be Big Mama who, as the widow, will take the lion's share, if not all of the estate.
Abused and ignored, McCarthy's Big Mama reveals a just slightly veiled perception that, as things stand, she will have the last word. Thought to be a fool by almost everyone, Big Mama here is nobody's fool. Terrific job. Also terrific in tough roles, are Kelly Ferguson-Moore as daughter-in-law Mae and Eric Rawski as the hapless son, Gooper. It has been suggested that these characters suffer the worst as the butt of Williams' social satire. Mae is a clucking hen, wrangling her brood and brooding over her turf. Rawski's Gooper looks for all the world like a Glenn Beck wannabe, with a matching talent for double talk. Both actors succeed in creating mutli-dimensional individuals who, in concert, offer the perfect portrait of the "mendacity" so central to the play's success.
Doug Crane and Jim Maloy round things out nicely as the avaricious Reverend Tooker and the venerable Doctor Baugh. And not least, a special mention for Carol McGuire, who portrayed the granddaughter Trixie. Miss McGuire was a delight every time she took to the stage, and provided a much needed breath of fresh air in an otherwise sultry Mississippi evening.
This is an excellent production, it moves deliberately and forcefully. Williams' language gets a good work-out here.
This production is helped enormously by the excellent technical support. The set, designed by Ron Schwartz is impressive. At first glance I thought the huge bedroom suite resembled nothing so much as a Pharaoh's tomb, ornate but quite lifeless, with everything a Delta King would need in the afterlife, and thus much in keeping with the biblical overtones inherent in the play.
The music, and sound effects by Tom Makar strike the perfect chords for this tropical, languid and decaying world. And Brian Cavanagh's lighting also adds the perfect mood. The costumes, by Dixon Reynolds, are rich and Hair & Make-up designer Susan Drozd does an impeccable job achieving the look of the Eisenhower era.
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, directed by ICTC Associate Director Greg Natale, through February 6, 2011.
www.irishclassicaltheatre.com
Images: Carol McGuire who plays Trixie with Diane Curley, Neal Moeller and Sheila McCarthy as Big Mama. Photos are by Gene Witkowski
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