Its summer, and very hot, in the house of Big Daddy - the Mississippi delta's richest cotton planter. Maggie fights to save her marriage to his son. Imprisoned by the past the family is torn apart by revelations of lust, greed and envy. A Pulitzer Prize winner. This production contains scenes and strong language of an adult nature. Age recommendation 12+
The hit Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof transferred to the Novello Theatre last night, featuring a stellar all-black anglo-american cast led by US stars James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad, reprising their performances as Big Daddy and Big Mama (See Also Today's 1st Night Photos).
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is set in a Mississippi plantation house at the time of ailing Big Daddy's birthday party, an event which sets the scene for family recriminations and revelations. His son Brick, a former college sports star, is more upset about the death of his friend Skipper than the disintegration of his marriage to a sexually frustrated wife Maggie.
Directed by Debbie Allen, Earl Jones and Rashad are joined by Briton Adrian Lester as Brick and American Sanaa Lathan as Maggie, the parts played in the 1958 screen version by Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor and in last year’s Broadway season by Terence Howard and Anika Noni Rose.
Overnight reviews were almost universally warm. Despite high expectations in the wake of its rave reception on Broadway last year, London critics were quick to welcome this “fine production” to the West End. Among the performances, James Earl Jones' “massive bull of a Big Daddy” and Lester's “graceful, leonine Brick” were the stand-outs, though special mention should also go to Sanaa Lathan's “sensual, deeply felt performance” as Maggie. On the issue of race, many critics made mention of the colour-blind nature of Williams' narrative. In the words of the Independent's Paul Taylor: “What is remarkable ... is how swiftly you become so absorbed by the universal elements in the story that you almost completely forget about the counter-intuitive colour of the actors' skins.”
Michael Coveney for Whatsonstage.com (four stars) - “Although Tennessee Williams’ great play of sexual and domestic mendacity is clearly set among rednecks in the Deep South in the 1950s, Debbie Allen’s revival from Broadway is an almost wholly successful transplant to the 1980s as an all-black Dynasty of the Delta plantation. Led by the legendary James Earl Jones – surely London’s last chance to see this great figure of the American theatre – as a rumbling, terrifying Big Daddy, Allen’s cast is a compelling synthesis of visiting and local talent … Maggie’s marriage to Brick, the former sports star and dedicated alcoholic, is a tragic parody of an ideal pairing: Adrian Lester’s graceful, leonine Brick is ferociously insistent on the purity of his friendship with his dead friend Skipper; he almost dances round the set on his crutch, finally aiming it at Maggie like a heat-seeking missile. There is something garish and brutal about Morgan Large’s design which places the marital bed upstage centre and denies us consolatory glimpses of scenic vistas or whirring fans … The play’s a shocking rollercoaster, still, and this revival, not without its bumpy moments, renews its full shock value.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (four stars) - “What difference does it make that Tennessee Williams' play is performed by a black cast in Debbie Allen's Broadway production? It undoubtedly gives the work a new dynamic. But ethnicity matters less than emotional firepower and an awareness of the essential Williams conflict between lies and truth; and both are abundantly present in this exhilarating evening … Allen's fine production brings out Williams' savage comedy as well as his emotional pain. Sanaa Lathan's incredibly sultry Maggie, long banished from Brick's bed, is both a mountain of sexual frustration and an unstoppable talker who drives her husband to hide his head in the pillows. Phylicia Rashad's excellent Big Mama is also both a pathetic victim of her husband's cruelty and a woman who, as someone said of Ethel Merman, is like a brass band going by. And there is good support from Peter de Jersey as Brick's elder brother whose grasping nature is explained by his lack of parental love. As in any good Williams production, one emerges moved by the author's compassion.”
Benedict Nightingale in the Times (four stars) - “Let’s concede at once that it’s not very likely that a black man could have become a rich, powerful plantation owner in the Mississippi of 1955, when Tennessee Williams wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or even in the 1980s, the decade in which Debbie Allen has relocated the slightly recast production she has brought from Broadway to London. But that soon seems, very literally, a skin-deep objection … James Earl Jones’ massive bull of a Big Daddy is brutish to Big Mama, glowers at the elder son he dislikes as if he were in a boxing ring with him, takes coarse glee in his imagined escape from the Grim Reaper and is contemptuous to everyone except Brick - the son he loves, played by our own Adrian Lester. Very well played, too. The one-time football star has retreated into self-disgust and hit the bottle, after the death of the friend who had confessed homosexual feelings for him. What Lester catches especially well is Brick’s difficult, doomed search for the kind of not-being that often seemed to be the gay, self-hating Williams’ quest, too.”
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail (three stars) - “American actor James Earl Jones is best known as the voice of Darth Vader from the Star Wars films. He was not always easy to understand then and the same is true of his arrival on the West End, playing Mississippi plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Mr Jones has no shortage of stage presence. The moment he enters (last night to welcoming applause - an irritating Broadway habit), this tale of family discord moves up at least two gears. Mind you, he does enter after a prolonged, static opening act, so that's not saying too much. Once he has arrived it become a question of 'what did he say?' and 'did you catch that?' Both he and one of his American co-stars, Sanaa Lathan, fail repeatedly to project their lines … This is a fairly bubbly 'Cat'. The high-ceilinged, brightly-lit set is positively airy. There is little sense of that humid Mid-West heat which so saps morale. The other, much-trumpeted novelty about this show is that the cast is all-black. This is less noticeable. All the players are thoroughly believable. I really don't think I'd have noticed if the producers hadn't pointed it out.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph (four stars) - “I suspect there would be howls of indignation if a white theatre company decided to perform a classic black play … And some will doubtless put it down to craven political correctness that there have been no corresponding complaints about a black company performing Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof … But as Debbie Allen, the director of this fine revival which enjoyed big success on Broadway last year, points out, the themes of Williams’s play are universal … it is surprisingly easy to accept that this play could just as easily be about wealthy black, rather than white, Americans … Occasionally, Allen seems to be treating the piece as if it were a very classy black sitcom. She plays up the comedy for all it is worth at the expense of simmering tension and pain as a family tears itself apart in the shadow of death … Adrian Lester is totally persuasive … Earl Jones superbly captures the rage of a man confronting his own mortality and Sanaa Lathan gives a wonderfully sensual, deeply felt performance as Brick’s frustrated, loving wife, Maggie.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent (four stars) - “To see a black cat cross your path is a proverbial sign of good luck. The all-black production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the 1955 Tennessee Williams' classic, certainly had good luck in spades on Broadway … With James Earl Jones (aka the voice of Darth Vader) still in stunning form as Big Daddy, but recast in many key roles, Debbie Allen's production opened last night in the West End. Did it prove that there is a creative coherence as well as a commercial canniness to the reverse-race concept? The answer is warmly affirmative … What is remarkable, though, about Allen's compelling, sensitive and acerbically comic production is how swiftly you become so absorbed by the universal elements in the story that you almost completely forget about the counter-intuitive colour of the actors' skins.”
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (four stars) - “Adrian Lester endows Brick with a defeated, almost robotic quality - his alcoholism mechanical, his attempts at violence farcical. While he occasionally lashes out angrily with a crutch, the main note of the performance is sour evasiveness … Lathan suggests Maggie’s frayed yet purposeful manner, but doesn’t quite catch the character’s masochistic longing and musical charm. She’s engaging, yet fails to transfix us as Maggie really should. Jones on the other hand brings massive gravity to his role as the bruising patriarch. Initially sounding like an old-fashioned Southern preacher afflicted with a bad cold, he nonetheless commands attention … Cat on a Hit Tin Roof is a strangely jagged drama, powerful in its depiction of moral crisis yet uneven and ambiguous. Debbie Allen’s direction, best in the two-handed scenes, can’t conceal this, and the updating of the setting to the 1980s makes it less plausible that Brick’s sexual confusion would cause him deep anxiety."
Although Tennessee Williams’ great play of sexual and domestic mendacity is clearly set among rednecks in the Deep South in the 1950s, Debbie Allen’s revival from Broadway is an almost wholly successful transplant to the 1980s as an all-black Dynasty of the Delta plantation.
Led by the legendary James Earl Jones – surely London’s last chance to see this great figure of the American theatre – as a rumbling, terrifying Big Daddy, Allen’s cast is a compelling synthesis of visiting and local talent.
Her sister Phylicia Rashad repeats her New York performance as a slightly hysterical, spiritually lonely Big Mama, and the stunning Broadway newcomer Sanaa Lathan makes an impressive, vindictive aria of Maggie’s first act torrent of sexual frustration and feline provocation.
Maggie’s marriage to Brick, the former sports star and dedicated alcoholic, is a tragic parody of an ideal pairing: Adrian Lester’s graceful, leonine Brick is ferociously insistent on the purity of his friendship with his dead friend Skipper; he almost dances round the set on his crutch, finally aiming it at Maggie like a heat-seeking missile.
There is something garish and brutal about Morgan Large’s design which places the marital bed upstage centre and denies us consolatory glimpses of scenic vistas or whirring fans. It’s the crude material kingdom of Big Daddy for which Brick, the anointed son, is challenged by his brother Gooper, the corporation lawyer, and his wife Mae with their brood of fat little no-necks.
Allen casts the RSC actor Peter de Jersey as a full-throttle, febrile Gooper in loud red socks, while the beautiful Nina Sosanya is a brilliantly unusual Mae: a vengeful reproach to Maggie in her boastful, figure-retaining fertility.
Allen has no qualms, with David Holmes’ lighting and Richard Brooker’s sound, in poeticising key moments – Brick’s memories of football glory, Big Mama’s big speech – and the return of Big Daddy allows us to see a man glorious liberated from the cancer diagnosis into savage outbursts of cruelty facing the truth at last with a newly conciliatory dignity.
The play’s a shocking rollercoaster, still, and this revival, not without its bumpy moments, renews its full shock value, with nice cameos from Joseph Mydell as the doctor and Derek Griffiths as a tame, subservient priest whose nerves are shredded at every turn in the bickering.
Any play lasting three hours has to be good at the Novello where a peculiar reverse rake makes the stalls seats very uncomfortable. Fortunately Debbie Allen's production of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof mostly delivers. The all black casting has gained most of the attention but the play is so strong that it is barely noticeable, except that James Earl Jones' fearsome Big Daddy makes perfect sense as someone who left school at ten and lifted himself up from plantation worker to owner. Sanaa Lathan is a convincingly manipulative Maggie and Phylicia Rashad is especially impressive in the final act. I didn't really get Adrian Lester's robotic Brick, there was no sense of the desperation of the alcoholic or any suggestion of his hidden sexuality. In contrast Peter de Jersey made the absolute most of his brief moment to shine as Gooper, clearly inheriting some of Big Daddy's worst chacteristics (if nothing else). It's good to be reminded that Americans can do drama as well as musicals and it's easy to see why the Tony voters were so impressed. - David Baxter
13 Jan 10
Good grief I agree with Mr James below for the first time ever I think. Absolute knock out, especially Adrian Lester who's the best Brick I've seen and James Earl Jones, the best big daddy. Nina Sosanya was sensational and in a less image conscious world would have been an exceptional Maggie. - Joesmith
10 Jan 10
A wonderful and breath taking evening. An audience that even starts taking part. Mesmerising. - Pit, Germany
15 Dec 09
The play starts with the longest nag in stage history, so 30 minutes in you’re just willing Maggie off the stage! This slows down the process of getting into the play, but things pick up when Brick begins to bite back and other characters arrive. Much of the second act is a two-hander between Big Daddy and his youngest son Brick, and this is where this production soars because both James Earl Jones (who doesn’t even seem to be acting) and Adrian Lester are masterly and the chemistry between them becomes electrifying. So much has been made of the four leads that two other fine performances have been rather overlooked – Peter de Jersey’s less favoured son and his pushy wife brilliantly played by Nina Sosanya. And what about the all-black casting? -well, with a few changes in the dialogue and a move forward 20 years or so, it's irrelevant – great drama is great drama and good performances are good performances. - Gareth James
11 Dec 09
Oh I enjoyed this so much. I'm from New Orleans originally and found it very true to home -especially how it looked! Awesome permeable set, and great 80's costumes too. James Earl Jones was so natural, and Adrian Lester certainly didn't hold back. Wasn't too keen on Sanaa to begin with, but soon warmed to her. Awesome night out, highly recommended. - Jane
08 Dec 09
I was very disappointed with this show. Adrian Lester seemed very uneasy in the role of Brick. I usually like everything he does but something was not working here. At times it was more like Neil Simon than Tennessee Williams. An all black cast, and updating the play to the 80s hasn't helped either. The set was awful too. It was like something out of a Feydeau farce rather than the Deep South.And Adrian corpsing...he did that last week too. Could have been great but somewhere between the Mississippi delta and NYC this production got out of control. It needs a firm directorial hand and possibly recasting here and there. - Stuart
06 Dec 09
i agree with the other WOS reader review...i was hugely dissapointed. For one thing, it was far too long - the first act itself could have done with soe judicial editing...people around me in the audience were coughing and wriggling uncomfortably in their seats, feeling as underwhelmed as i did. Finall James Earl Jones hits the stage and the whole thing gets a surge of much needed energy...he was by far the highlight of the show. Adrian Lester for me was boring...so slow and mono-syllabic - if it was a character choice then i'm afraid it was the wrong choice. I understand Brick is meant to be disillusioned and heartbroken - but i had no sympathy for him at all - which is cruical for this play to work.
a shame, particularly as the tickets were £40. - casey monday
06 Dec 09
Before I write I have to say I wanted this to be a big hit, found the casting brave and exciting and had word it was excellent in New York.
Now why is no one being honest about it me thinks...?
I was there last night and from the dress circle sorry but this is no great production.
In brief: Sanaa and Adrian are good (but Adrian looked very ill at ease in the part and you never thought he was James Earl son!) Phylicia well what was that all about; make and wig all over the top and no pain in her perfomance, all old lady acting.
James swolled far too many words and could not always be heard.
There was no heat or tension and no shock in the revelations.
The set was good but the back cloth awful and I will not start on the crude lighting.
Hitting the bed centre stage with a change of lighting to depict a key speech or monologue.
In truth I think poor direction and a cast not working together are to blame.
- first night
02 Dec 09
Went to see this on the opening night - 21 Nov. A great evening - the audience were almost Shakespearean in their participation, whooping up James Earl Jones when he appeared, gasping at some of the unkind lines said by one character to another. I'm really concerned if Adrian Lester is going to get through the run without ACTUALLY breaking a limb, given the amount of falling and jumping he does on one leg. He was great, even if now and then it was more Brummie Delta than Mississippi Delta - and he did corpse once. Not that anyone minded.
And Derek Griffiths! The man's a legend! - Simon Martin
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