Urban World

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Cast List
    James Earl Jones
    Phylicia Rashad
    Adrian Lester
    Sanaa Lathan
    Peter De Jersey
    Nina Sosanya
    Richard Blackwood

Written by
    Tennessee Williams

Directed by
    Debbie Allen

There has been a lot of commentary about the fact that this play features an all-black cast. This is because Tennessee Williams' original, is set on a Southern plantation in 1950's USA. What we very quickly find out in this production however is that the issues [particularly that of family tension] which Williams dealt with in the original play, transcend race. This is, I suppose, the point that Allen is trying to make. The end result is that we can all identify with what is unfolding before our eyes.

This play is a long one, and quite rigidly structured. What the rigidity allows for, however, is a moment in the spotlight for each of the main characters. While Lester is smouldering as Brick, Lathan is fierce as Maggie. Expertly multi-tasking with her gorgeous body, she chases her husband Brick and his father's money with equal ferocity. While trying to cope with the fact that everyone knows her husband refuses to sleep with her. Poor Brick meanwhile, battles alcoholism, the loss of his best friend, rumours of homosexuality, and still finds time to fit in intimacy issues with his father. It's really fitting that he spends the entire play limping around the stage with his left leg bound in a cast. He might as well be bound physically as well as emotionally right?

Infact, as distant as all the family members seem from each other, being heavily bound to something unattainable is a trait that they all share. Peter De Jersey and Sosanya do uptight and jittery superbly as they shamelessly use their kids to secure a huge chunk of Big Daddy's land. Rashad, as Big Mama, is funny yet tragic as she seeks to protect the fortune and health of a man who freely admits that he ‘can't stand the sight, smell nor sound' of her.

Then there's James Earl Jones as Big Daddy. Big Daddy is crude, harsh, and talks too much when he really ought to be listening. However, I, like most of the audience, found him hilarious. Even his cruel jibes at his wife drew huge laughs from the crowd. Helping us to understand what it is that Big Mama and Maggie find so magnetic about he and his son Brick [who incidentally are, in terms of character, mirrors of each other].

The humour is played up in this production, but it intentionally throws only the thinnest of veils over the bitterness, cruelty and hate that propels this family and keeps them glued so uncomfortably together.

It's a brilliant play and an impressive production. Well worth watching.

Playing at the Novello Theatre from 1st December 2009 until Saturday 10th April 2010