Cat on a Hot Tin Roof @ The Classics Theatre Project

Photos by Kate Voskova

—Jan Farrington

But, Brick! Skipper is dead! I’m alive! Maggie the Cat is alive! I’m alive, alive!

When I’m not in a theater watching Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I’ve been known to wonder: Do I want to see it again—to watch this rich, white, self-destructive, deluded Southern clan try to blow itself to bits one more time?

And then, The Classics Theatre Project’s engines-revving, pedal-to-the-metal production of this play, directed by Susan Sargeant, reminds me why the answer will always, ALWAYS be yes. After nearly 70 years, Cat is a classic of American theater—some bits of it dated, certainly, but never the essentials, the heart of it. And with a tremendous cast onstage, TCTP just plain roars through Williams’ propulsive script.

Which is, in the end, about life itself (our lives too, not just theirs) and everything that keeps us going, stops us cold, makes us try, reach, fight for…whatever it is. And about the un-dodgeable fact that, as Big Daddy says, “the human animal is a beast that dies”—the only one that knows what’s coming, and can look for ways to make life matter before it ends.

TCTP’s artistic director Joey Folsom plays Brick as brooding and bitter, breakable as a whisky glass. His best friend’s dead. He’s quit his job. His marriage to college sweetheart Maggie (Olivia Cinquepalmi) by his own design lacks sex, children, and civil conversation. They both have grievances and demons—but she’s still fighting for “us.” Has Brick given up, or is drunk and detached just a phase?

Act One is all about them (the football hero and the beauty) and what went wrong—and this isn’t the 1958 movie version, which put plenty of Williams’ script (and direct talk of Brick’s probable homosexuality) into an unmarked locker at MGM. Here, we know what they’re talking about. Brick’s breakdown is connected to the suicide of boyhood friend Skipper (and Maggie’s possible involvement). “Death,” says Maggie, “was the only icebox where you could keep” what was really going on, unspoken, in that friendship. Cinquepalmi plays Maggie as a cool cat who controls her passion for Brick. “Born poor” and determined not to die that way, she wants him in her bed, for lust and love and babies, and for Big Daddy’s money—but she’s smart enough not to rush the boy. Whatever else Brick’s got going, when he’s face-to-face with Maggie, there’s something in his eyes —and we can’t stop watching the both of them.

Marvelous Terry Martin, longtime head of WaterTower Theatre, plays Big Daddy Pollitt, head of the clan—a big-voiced, quick-tempered tyrant, at first glance. But Martin has the craft to show us more, to sound every emotional note Williams put into the character: a strong man re-ignited by the news he may not be dying after all…a father disgusted by the lies (“mendacity”) of his world…a husband who lusts after young women, talks trash about his wife (Lulu Ward’s Big Mama is noisy, silly and loving), hates the grandkids, and isn’t shocked by the possibility of Brick’s homosexuality. He’s a fascinating beast who’s seen a lot of life—and he isn’t ready to let go of it.

Life, again: this time as legacy, rivalry, jealousy. Who gets the money to fuel all those hopes and dreams? Big Daddy’s “other” son Gooper (Brian Witkowicz) and wife Mae (Jenny Webb) know they aren’t the golden couple. (Gooper v. Brick? The nicknames say it all.) So they work overtime having babies to please Big Daddy, and pointing out Brick and Maggie’s failings—hoping to inherit everything.

At the edges of the action are a preacher (John Pszyk) who talks too much (“The stork and the Reaper are runnin’ neck and neck!” he says, thinking out loud of Big Daddy’s illness and Mae’s any-minute baby); a doctor (Stephen Miller) who sits sadly on the sidelines, waiting to handle some truth-telling; and the noisy grandkids (Isabelle Witkowicz, Nadine DeBerardinis, and Rosalie Williamscraig) Maggie calls the “no-neck monsters.”  While the central characters try to have serious talks, family chaos breaks out repeatedly. Life is like that, too.

Folsom designed the set, scattered period furniture backed by plantation columns that break off jaggedly at the top. Bruce Coleman’s costumes—Brick’s unbuttoned pajamas, Maggie’s white slip and simple party wear, Big Daddy’s birthday togs (silk sport jacket and cigar)—are character-perfect. Part of sound designer Lowell Sargeant’s job was to create the feel of the outer world of Mississippi, with croaking frogs, fireworks and thunder (Gabe Coleman’s lighting adds to the effects), and a repeated bird call (a hawk in Williams’ original, but perhaps not here) that only Brick seems to hear. He whistles back, every time. Is it an invitation to flight, to leave the cage of his life and marriage? Feel free to guess.

Williams’ original ending for Cat is bleaker than the one he wrote only a few years later (used in this production). In neither version do Brick and Maggie’s future feel settled—but in this staging, there’s more than a whiff of hope and affection. And the play, which anticipates so many cultural and political conversations that “came out” later, in the Sixties, Seventies and beyond, is still a remarkable, gorgeously written explosion of talk—about the many, many things we usually left unsaid…back in the day.

If you’ve never seen Cat onstage—or barely remember some version of it—this would be a great one to see. It’s smart, and hot as hell.

WHEN: Through September 11

WHERE: Addison Theatre Center (black box)

WEB: theclassicstheatreproject.com