Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I went to see this with my grandmother last week and am only now getting around to writing about it. It was a production I liked, but didn't love. And given that they're charging an arm and a leg for it one wants it to be fabulous. Instead, at times it feels flat, or at the very least as if the characters are not fully embodying their roles.

Terrance Howard, who plays Brick in this production was out in the show I saw and his understudy, while inoffensive and nice to look at, also wasn't terribly convincing. Anika Noni Rose is convincing as Maggie--although she was hard to hear/understand at times--and it lent the first act a bit of an unbalanced feeling. That wasn't too troubling though because Rose's Maggie is so captivating and intense a character that I didn't really think too much about Brick. The problems occur when Rose is offstage. She's pretty much providing all the fire in this production and no one else is nearly as galvanizing.

The moment Phylicia Rashad walked onto the stage the audience burst into applause, which I hate. No one's applauding her for the performance--it hasn't happened yet--and no one's applauding the character. They're just applauding Rashad for existing and stepping onto the stage. And there's a certain smugness to it all: we recognized this actor, we're in the know, we're going to applaud. I think it takes away from the actual work being done before us. That's a side note though. Far more problematic is the fact that I hated her portrayal of Big Mama. I'm not the biggest Phylicia Rashad fan; I've seen her in plays before and found her less then enjoyable. Nevertheless I was disappointed in the fact that Big Mama, as she plays her, is basically a caricature. It doesn't do justice to Tennessee Williams' writing.

James Earl Jones--subject to his own hearty applause upon entrance, of course--is not a caricature, but he's also not terribly interesting. The New York Times writes:

Mr. Jones is forced to play his character as a blustery but affectionate fellow whose vulgarity masks a good heart, not so different from the lovable codger he recently portrayed in “On Golden Pond.”

It's very true that the character is very like the one he played in On Golden Pond. There's not much sharpness to him and it takes a lot of the bite out of the play.

The audience was so loud that I actually missed bits in the beginning of the second act. We were sitting near a large group that had traveled to the city to see the show and the women behind us were basically holding a conversation a couple minutes into the act. Given that one of them had spent the end of intermission obliviously whacking both my grandmother and me in the face with her scarf I was fairly irritated. People were also eating some kind of chips or snack mix our of those loud crinkly bags. I'm really not the fussiest theatergoer but I do think it would be nice if people followed basic theater etiquette.

I've made this sound like a miserable experience though and that wasn't the case. It's a brilliantly written play and the production wasn't terrible, just tending toward the dull when Rose wasn't there enlivening it.