Artistic Director Tony Estrella tells the audience that Gamm Theatre saved the best for last with a riveting season-ending production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and he is not wrong.
The Tennessee Williams classic is an epic (close to three hours with two intermissions) and painfully sobering look at human frailties and the constant battle good and evil wage in the psyches of everyday people.
In his flowery and dramatic style, Williams creates a family of characters that live out the metaphor of the play’s title, stewed in lies and disappointment. When a young wife, Maggie, asks her husband, a washed-up athlete and favored son named Brick, what the “victory of a cat on a hot tin roof” is, she gets no response until she answers herself with, “Just staying on it.”
The production’s director, Steve Kidd, explains the importance of this comparison, saying, “Everybody in the play is trapped on some version of that roof, between a rock and a hard place, trying to survive an unbearable emotional heat.”
Brick has lost himself in the bottle, where he finds peace from the hatred he has cultivated for himself and those around him since the death of a close friend. Maggie desperately tries to fuse scraps of their marriage back together and ignite the flame in their marriage of convenience. Brick’s parents – Big Mama and Big Daddy – struggle to regain the vitality and love of their youth. His brother and sister-in-law, anticipating Big Daddy’s death, yearn for the safety of their inheritance.
It is an intricately interwoven familial mess that generates emotional outbursts, the breaking of glass, and impressively sustained bellowing by this well-chosen cast.
The story is multiple layers of sadness. At one point, Maggie looks into the mirror and says, “Who are you? Life has got to continue even after the dream of life is all over.”
Yet it is an inspiring story. In a quieter moment, Big Daddy asks Brick why people find it so difficult to talk to each other. He has seen more than one lie unravel before him as the family gathers for his birthday, and he is truly mystified. He niggles and bribes his son until they have an honest conversation about life and the future.
With near-perfect execution, the Southern accented cast delivers Williams’ brilliance in performances that are simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming. Nora Escheneimer’s Maggie is visceral and raw and the opening scene, in which she pleads with her emotionally distant husband to engage in his family gathering to secure them part of the pending inheritance, is physical. She’s strutting, leaping onto the bed, twirling on the thick bedpost and draping herself on the sofa in her slip. Angst drips from her drawled lines.
Joe Penczak as Big Daddy gives stereotypical Southern plantation owner with a persona that veers from genteel to guttural, depending on the audience. Chomping on a cigar, his lines are largely bellowed but soften when he digs into his son’s struggles. Karen MacDonald plays his wife with the ideal blend of hysteria, delusion and moxie.
“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is part of the American theatrical canon and this production is a must-see. Gamm gives it the magic and emphasis it deserves. The show is running through June 21. For tickets, go to gammtheatre.org.