After watching the Pollitt family celebrate the patriarch's birthday in Tennessee Williams' classic Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, you will go home and clasp your own dysfunctional family to bosom with gratitude. Infidelity, homosexuality, alcoholism, chicanery and children in need of domestication--this play has it all spread out among a cast with names like Gooper, Sister-Woman, Brick and Maggie The Cat.
The plot basically consists of the struggle to inherit Big Daddy Pollitt's vast estate. Like all the best tycoons he has made no will and clearly favors one son over the other. It's people like this that keep Dear Abby in business. Well, Big Daddy has terminal cancer, his favorite son is a lush and probably gay. The other son is a responsible lawyer with a wife and five and a half children. Guess who isn't getting bupkis if Big Daddy DOES sign a will.
Brick is laid up in his room (at Daddy's house) with a broken ankle and no visible means of support. His sole comfort is a well-stocked liquor cabinet which insulates him from the demands of his frustrated wife, Maggie (the cat of the title). Maggie wants love, money and a child and all that stands in her way is a feckless husband who can't seem to get past the fact that Maggie tried to commit adultery with Brick's best friend Skipper. This resulted in Skipper telling Brick that he couldn't have sex with Maggie because she was the wrong half of the couple. Brick pitched a fit, Skipper died and Maggie spends all of Act One thinking over the wisdom of THAT plan.
Brick and Maggie's bedroom is Ground Zero for the rest of the family who traipse in and out without bothering to knock. This probably has an inhibiting effect on Brick's libido but it's not the worst of his problems. Eventually Maggie tells Big Daddy a big fib. She claims to be pregnant--by Brick--and ends the play by pouring out Brick's alcohol and propping him up in bed while she lays down the law.
This play is VERY tricky for a number of reasons. In the first place there really isn't ANYONE you would care to know personally. They range from annoying to repellent and the moral center of this universe is a drunk.
Second, the entire first act is a virtual monologue by Maggie as she has to enlist our sympathy while laying out the whole plot and psychoanalyzing every character who matters, living or dead. All this while putting on stockings and makeup with the aim of getting a rise out of her surly husband who barely speaks to her. That's pretty much the first act.
In the second act we find out, along with Brick, that Big Daddy has no problem with homosexuality. It worked for him and he sees no reason it shouldn't work for Brick. Big Daddy points out that Brick is his own worst enemy and Brick gives Big Daddy a bit of news in return. Big Daddy is going to die of cancer, sooner rather than later. Big Daddy takes it like a man--he has a tantrum.
In act three everyone concedes that nice guys finish last, though nobody in this play actually knows one. Still, the gloves come off and finally Maggie and Brick, who have prided themselves on honesty if nothing else (and they're right about that), connive in lying to the rest of the family about Maggie's pregnancy. Apparently, the thinking is that sex got them into this mess and sex can get them out of it again.
Despite a cast of thousands, the play is really a three-person drama. It rises and falls on Maggie, Big Daddy and Brick. Brick has the miserable job of being the reactor to everything that happens. He never initiates anything but his responses are vital to the performances of the other two. He needs to be able to hold our interest by saying and doing virtually nothing. Maggie has to hit notes other than sex and Big Daddy has to get past being a crude narcissist.
You can see a handsome production of this staple of the American Theatre at the Teche Theatre for the Performing Arts in Franklin on Monday and Tuesday, October 20 and 21, at 7:30.
The production, directed by Allison Jones, looks great and features some fine acting. Ladaisha Bowles is a commanding Maggie and Larry Deslatte Jr., a blustery Big Daddy. As Brick, Ed Verdin makes art of surly silence which is capable of abrupt explosions. Erin Segura is a pretty and sympathetic Mae and Ricky Pellerin makes you sympathize with Gooper. Denise Hodge is a "smother" for the ages as Big Mama. The no-neck monsters are little horrors and the guests and servants look appropriately uncomfortable at the shenanigans going on around them.
Put a little extra aside for the baby-sitter, though. The production runs over three hours. Language and thematic material make this a PG (PG-13?) evening.
---Walter Brown
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