Daisy Edgar-Jones in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Almeida. Credit Marc BrennerFor those of us who remember the close-up vitriol and passionate intensity of Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman going at it in the 1958 movie version, any stage revival has a small mountain to climb to win over and galvanise an audience’s attention. Here, with a decent cast including Kingsley Ben-Adir as bent-on-alcoholic-destruction Brick and Daisy Edgar-Jones as his incessantly aroused (like a cat on a hot tin roof) and manipulative wife Maggie, matters unfold at a languorous pace with the latter doing most of the heavy lifting in the first half, whilst he looks on contemptuously, becoming evermore stupefied.
Their childless marriage is now a loveless one since Maggie got drunk with (and possibly seduced) Brick’s closest friend Skipper. There is an inference that Maggie was jealous of their closeness and was suspicious the men were lovers. We learn that a remorseful Skipper later killed himself for betraying and hurting his friend. As a result, believing his wife’s behaviour to have been the unforgivable catalyst, Brick welcomes alcohol-induced oblivion and rebuffs her amorous advances.
As the extended family gather for the patriarch’s birthday celebrations, Big Daddy (Lennie James) exhibits a new found strength having been told that his cancer tests are negative. We later learn this is a lie perpetrated by Brick’s older brother Gooper (Ukweli Roach) and sister-in-law Mae (Pearl Chanda) who are intent on finalising their plans to take over the plantation once Big Mama (Clare Burt) is made a widow.
Perhaps the most incongruous element of this oft-unedifying production is the unfathomable set by Chloe Lamford. Walls of a finish which looks both tiled and like plates of aluminium, envelope the playing area, save for a massive upstage void which sometimes serves to admit actors and at other times, is an inferred solid wall. Amidst this lack of clarity is plonked a baby grand piano from which a largely silent and woefully underused Seb Carrington (as The Pianist) occasionally delivers a discordant ear bashing whilst eerily suggesting he may be the late lamented Skipper. The family’s effete and mousy local preacher Reverend Tooker (Guy Burgess) completes the cast (save a few deliberately irritating “no-neck” children) and manages to elicit a couple of laughs in a role which ordinarily draws little attention.
Despite the valiant efforts of Daisy Edgar-Jones and Clare Burt to deliver female characters with edge and a vested interest in the future, the sizzle, sass and jeopardy was largely missing in this attempted resurrection of an American classic.
Cat On a Hot Tin Roof is at the Almeida Theatre until Sat 1 February.
