Theatre in Review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Ruth Stage/Theatre at St. Clement's)

	Alison Fraser, Christian Jules LeBlanc. Photo: Miles Skalli

Maggie, the heroine of Tennessee Williams' play, demands to be heard -- indeed, her future depends on it -- so it's a problem that, in this new revival, she is so difficult to make out. Maggie, a former golden girl locked in a stalemate marriage with Brick, an aging ex-college football star, is terrified of slipping back into the genteel poverty that was her childhood lot. Having married into money, she needs to produce an heir, thereby guaranteeing that she and Brick will inherit the family's 28,000-acre plantation. But Brick, nursing a broken ankle after a drunken escapade and lost in a bourbon fog, wants nothing to do with his wife. It's summertime in Mississippi; the atmosphere in their bedroom is sticky with humidity and thick with resentment.

But nothing stops Maggie; indeed, the first act of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an extended talking jag as she frantically tries to get a response, any response, from Brick, who has tuned her out, along with the rest of the world. (The first laugh of the evening comes when, catching her between arias, he absent-mindedly mutters, "Did you say something Maggie?") She has real cause for alarm; when finally prodded into engaging with her, he wonders, "How in hell on earth do you imagine -- that you're going to have a child by a man that can't stand you?"

It's a fair question, devastating in its implications. The rules of war have been laid out and the field of battle -- the double bed located at stage left -- has been identified. In this production, however, the combatants are alarmingly unequal. The role of boozy, passive Brick is a trap for actors who all too often fade into the woodwork, but Matt de Rogatis finds fresh nuances in the character, investing him with a coiled tension that adds an extra note of danger to these marital skirmishes. The signs are subtle but unmistakable: Note how, during one of Maggie's tirades, he nervously drums his fingers against a tumbler. Listen for the catch in his voice when the conversation veers toward forbidden territory. And, when forced to admit his part in the death of his best friend Skipper, his fury leaves him rattled to his core. This Brick is sitting on an arsenal of unacceptable emotions; bourbon is the only thing standing between him and an unacceptable, annihilating truth.

If only he had a Maggie to equal his intensity and clarity of purpose. Sonoya Mizuno is a trained ballerina with some impressive screen credits, including roles in the film Ex Machina, the Netflix series Maniac, and the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. But she appears to have little or no stage acting experience and Maggie is an enormous technical challenge even for veteran actresses; her characterization is colorless, devoid of nervous energy and humor. Maggie is indeed a cat, clawing desperately at Brick, trying to jolt him back to life; Mizuno comes off as entitled, impatient, given to harangues. She is basically overmatched here, rattling off her speeches at such a rapid clip they are reduced to mush.

There are other reasons why so much of Act I is inaudible. Theatre at St. Clement's has always suffered from poor acoustics, which, currently, are exacerbated by a noisy air-conditioning system; an additional hindrance is the sound rig, which places side-fill speakers along the theatre's walls. At the performance I attended, during the first act, Mizuno's voice came out of a speaker at house left even she was standing downstage left, resulting in an oddly disembodied effect. The sound situation improved later in the evening, but the performance did not; a Cat without a volatile Maggie is at a crippling disadvantage.

Then again, Joe Rosario's production often seems to be working against itself. Some of this has to do with casting that tries to reframe the standard view of certain characters. Big Daddy, who is dying of colon cancer, is usually played by large or heavyset actors, who rage, Lear-like, against the fast-approaching end. Christian Jules LeBlanc is the first bantam-weight Big Daddy I've seen, but, aside from a certain amount of fussing, his is a fiery characterization; the production jumps to life in the second act, when Big Daddy faces off with Brick for a bruising exchange of home truths. More puzzling is the choice of svelte, sexy Alison Fraser, looking smashing in a tight dress with a plunging decolletage, as Big Mama. When Big Daddy cruelly dismisses her as old and fat, one suspects he needs an optometrist; doesn't he see the smart, stylish woman in front of him? To be sure, Fraser has her successes, departing from the room, head held high, after a verbal pasting, and, later, savagely denouncing the vultures who have assembled to joust over the family fortune. ("I'm talking in Big Daddy's language now.") But she's not an ideal fit and she, too, has occasional audibility problems.

Even more oddly, Rosario has updated the action to the present day. Thus, the interior of Brick and Maggie's bedroom seems to be furnished out of the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams catalog. (Matthew Imhoff's set design has its eccentric touches: Why is the bedroom shower directly in front of the cocktail bar? Does Brick need a drink even when soaping up?) We also see characters discreetly checking their smartphones and children playing with toy lightsabers. These touches conflict with dialogue that references such mid-twentieth-century phenomenon as Cook's Tour and vitamin B12 injections. Ultimately, the characters are caught in a time warp, looking very much of today but adhering to the manners and morals of 1955.

More damagingly, the revised time frame lowers the dramatic stakes: Brick's personal tailspin is based on the fear that his extraordinarily close friendship with Skipper was unconsciously homoerotic -- a source of unimaginable shame and scandal when Cat was first produced. As Brick practically howls at Big Daddy, "Don't you know how people feel about things like that? How, how disgusted they are by things like that? Why, at Ole Miss when it was discovered a pledge to our fraternity, Skipper's and mine, did a, attempted to do a, unnatural thing with -- We not only dropped him like a hot rock! -- We told him to git off the campus, and he did, he got! All the way to North Africa...last I heard!" Nowadays, however, rather than exiling himself on another continent, that young man might join the UM Pride Network, one of six or seven gay groups on the Ole Miss campus. (He might not make homecoming king, but still.) Williams' dramas are planted in highly specific soil; uproot them at your peril.

If Rosario's direction is sometimes stodgy and lacking in definition, he gets better-than-solid work from Spencer Scott, ulterior and grasping as Big Daddy's unloved second son Gooper, and Tiffan Borelli, all saccharin and cyanide as Mae, Gooper's alarmingly fertile spouse. If Xandra Smith's contemporary costumes are wrong-headed, they are at least flattering. (Scott Burkhart capably designed Le Blanc's outfits.) Steve Wolf's lighting is solid enough. Ben Levine's sound design includes some murkily executed music cues under certain key lines, usually when Skipper is mentioned -- a surprisingly hokey strategy.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of Williams' greatest plays, but its tripartite structure makes it tricky to pull off. Each act features a distinct set of combatants: Maggie versus Brick in Act I, Big Daddy versus Brick in Act II, and, in Act III, the entire family assembling to battle over the estate, with Big Mama at the center of the action. It's a true ensemble piece and it demands that everyone perform at the same level. If not, the result will be seriously unbalanced. That's the trouble here, along with a directorial concept that muddies the dramatic waters. If you've never seen this brilliant play, this is not the place to start. If you know and love it, prepare to be distressed. --David Barbour