Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

The weather may be unpredictably cool, but inside the Aurora Fox, Tennessee Williams’ stunning Cat On A Hot Tin Roof raises the temperature to a fan-wanting warm.

Lisa Mumpton as Mae, Rebecca Gibel as Maggie and Judy Phelan Hill as Big Mamma in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Aurora Fox.

Not an easy play to put together because of actor demands on all of the characters, this production lives up to all of the expected challenges Williams carefully constructs.

It is imperative Maggie the Cat sizzle with a smoldering desperate rage slightly buried under a veneer of smiling calculated pleas for attention from husband Brick, who is unable to respond to anyone or anything except for how much booze swirls in his glass.

Rebecca Gibel does not disappoint.

From the moment she slithers onto stage in trumped up frustration over her sister in law’s “no neck monsters” because one of the unruly children spilled juice on her dress, Gibel surrounds herself with a Maggie she owns.

On a plantation of “28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the Valley Nile” the family of Big Daddy (Jack Casperson) gathers on a hot sultry summer evening in 1954 to celebrate his 65th Birthday. Overshadowing the celebration simmers the varying degrees of hidden and not so hidden agendas sparked by the possibility Big Daddy may have cancer. If he dies, who gets the “28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the Valley Nile?”

On an incredibly gorgeous symbolic set designed by Austin Hein, the play takes place in Maggie and Brick’s (Chris Reid) bedroom showing access to the terrace surrounding the large mansion.

Central to Maggie and Brick’s existence, the bed sits on a high pedestal with stairs leading up to it. The night before, jumping hurtles, Brick broke his ankle. With a leg in a cast, hobbling around on crutches, the birthday celebration will take place there.

Something has soaked the life out of Brick. Reid brings to Brick a real sense of hopelessness that died with his best friend, Skipper. He cares about nothing except if his glass has booze.

Insinuations run freely fed loosely by Mae (Lisa Mumpton) whose bedroom happens to be next door. She hears late night rumblings, knowing Maggie and Brick don’t sleep together. Brick sleeps on the couch. Without the intimacy, there can be no baby, without a baby, how can they expect to inherit the estate? After all, this fly by night nagger has five children with a sixth on the way, never allowing Maggie to forget for one instance. Irritating, as she is, irritating as she is suppose to be, digging, scraping, controlling Mae has been deliciously constructed by Mumpton with honest believability in her dishonest approach. Married to Brick’s brother, Gooper (Chris Tabb), a corporate lawyer, Mumpton’s Mae flies in the face of social pretense. Greedy, grabby, demanding, snide Mae is about as subtle as a ham sandwich in a synogogue. Smug, pretentious in his own right, bitter knowing Brick is the favorite brother, Tabb gives a stunning performance in his ‘verbalness’ and silence. The disgusted facial expressions he loans to Gooper tell the story.

Big Momma (Judy Phelan Hill) slobbers with gooey attention on to Brick constantly calling him her precious baby, insinuating he drinks too much, begging him not to drink anymore, living in a dream world that all is love and peace, on a plantation where love and peace don’t even know the address, much less have a chance to breathe freely. Phelan Hill’s performance in juxtaposition to Casperson’s Big Daddy breaks the heart.

Elated he doesn’t think he has cancer, smug in his own right, rough, gruff, he can’t remember why he married Big Momma, musing “why is it every time Big Momma walks out of the room, I can’t remember what she looks like.” He doesn’t like anyone in the family except Brick. He knows why Brick drinks; although he carries the same insinuation Maggie does suspecting there was more to his relationship with Skipper than just best friends. It’s OK with him.

Step Pierce’s Reverend Tooker shrouds himself with a ministerial atmosphere indicating staunch discomfort in Big Daddy’s domain. This is one minister who is out of his element, and knows it, frequently expressing himself with drawn persimmon facial expressions.

Dark humor plants itself within the confines of the personalities involved, but Pearce lightens up the dark corners for a few seconds when Tooker seeks a bathroom during a heavy scene between Big Daddy and Brick.

Joe Wilson’s Doc Baugh resounds with a different type of discomfort, knowing the truth surrounding Big Daddy, the truth he must reveal, the truth he would prefer not to. Even in his moments of silence on stage Wilson gives Baugh the quality needed allowing him to stand out. Both Pearce and Wilson stand out in their secondary characters with precise detailed chiseled character portraits, adding to the intensity of the unfolding avalanche. Because of their characterizations are so well developed their significance in the Big Daddy story stands side by side with their own power. These are two roles that all too easily can become “bodies on stage,” but neither Pearce nor Wilson is about to let that happen.

Directed by Brenda Cook, this production of Cat rises to the top of the list with distinct overbearing characters, smooth staging, and precise timing. Cook gives the impression she has climbed inside William’s script, unabashedly revealing what she understands. Williams can’t be tip-toed through the elements, and she doesn’t. She makes sure everyone involved hangs out the mendacity swirling throughout the atmosphere and characters with a brilliant waving star-studded flag.

The background of the stars fading into the light, brimming brightly, subtle but obviously there, records the summer nighttime.

Big Momma lives in a dream world. Big Daddy insists he doesn’t like her and never has although they’ve been together for 40 years. Now that he babbles incessantly with Brick airing a sense of freedom from only having a spastic colon instead of cancer, he now wants pleasure with the young ladies, making the old man happy. Brick is his favorite he tells him. He always liked talking with him. Brick points out the conversations are always one-sided. Big Daddy talks, Brick pretends to listen, until the big guy fully realizes his favorite son is an alcoholic. Wanting to know why he drinks, he throws Brick to the floor, leading Brick to admit he drinks out of disgust leading to a down to earth heart rending conversation about Skipper.

This encounter covers most of Act II, and in spite of the issues revolving around Brick and Maggie, Mae and Gooper, Big Daddy and Big Momma, Williams buries the heart of the play within the context of this one encounter where truth wants to be hung out on the clothes line to dry. Another revelation seeps into the old man’s psyche snipping the air right out of his over engaged hot air balloon.

Fireworks shooting off in the bedroom undercover between Big Daddy and Brick and visually exploding beyond the terrace combines symbolism with symbolism covering the entire set. My initial impression was wanting the outside fireworks to explode a little bigger and brighter, but the more I think about it, it too matches the symbolizes building and broiling within the context of the characters and their detached lives.

For an actor to reveal the inside and outside of a character with identical strength and power demands exceptional expertise. Cook demonstrates the capacities of her actors to consistently show the outside persona grappling with the inside stuff that feeds the outside persona.

This provides a breathtaking performance for Casperson as Big Daddy, a heartbreaking performance by Phelan Hill as Big Momma, a shut down hopeless performance for Brick by Reid, a humorous but sad stab at social pretense for Mae by Mumpton, a slithering cat on a hot tin roof aching to love and be loved fairly and honestly for Maggie by Gibel, a cut throat snobbish corporate lawyer performance for Gooper by Tabb, and yes, even a persimmon-faced out of place reverend performance by Pearce, and a nervous but competent would-rather-anywhere-but-there doctor performance for Baugh by Wilson. Consistently, the cast gives an in depth five dimensional portrait of these complicated Willamesque dysfunctional characters.

Peter Neilson’s brilliant lighting design and El Armstrong’s subtle and not so subtle sound design follows and fondles the symbolism lying deep within the soul’s of the characters. Sharon McClaury’s comprehension of who the characters are and who they want to be shows in her costume design for each one. Allowing their statements of truth wrapped in mendacity to stand up to be counted.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is an exhausting and exhilarating production highlighting the now made famous Southern family who live on the plantation of “28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the Valley Nile,” at the same time, speaking to the universality of human nature squarely where Williams’ genius lies.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof has been done numerous times by the highly professional theatres to theatres whose arms were too short to box with the script, but no one any where, any place has done it any better than this cast, this director, this crew.

In light of the horrific events in Virginia this week, it’s a perfect time to experience the thoughtful, provocative rummaging into family relationships Williams brilliantly provides, the theatre community who gives it to us as a gift, and the theatre people who share it as a family.