Tennessee Williams Festival’s “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” Captures this family feud’s ambiguous essence

The poster for the current staging of “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” by the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis depicts a confident, determined Maggie in an ambiguous embrace with her husband, Brick. Is she clutching, hanging on for dear life, or ready to scratch his bare back? At play’s end, with Brick’s final words, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was true?” hanging damply in the dense air, just after Maggie professes to love him, the scene fades to black with the couple entwined in an embrace that could be hopeful or could be just a way stop on the downward spiral of their dysfunctional family.

This ending is a far cry from the Hollywood ending in the Richard Brooks’ 1958 film based on the play when Brick gets the last word. Williams’ original ending is far more appropriate and satisfying.

Much has been written about the ambitious, aggressive sexuality of Maggie – Maggie the Cat – but the other characters are cats too. Maggie describes her life with Brick with, “We occupy the same cage, that’s all,” but she’s really describing the whole Pollitt family. In this way, “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” shares much in common with Jacques Tourner’s 1942 film, “Cat People.” Both stories explore atmospheric tension and psychological complexity with characters moved by forces they don’t seem to understand and misguided by their own psyches. These cats on a metaphorical hot tin roof are in a familial cage fight without a clear way to exit.

Director Michael Wilson helms this production of “Cat,” and he deftly captures Williams’ intent to “catch the true quality of experience in a group of people – that cloudy, flickering, evanescent – fiercely charge! – interplay of live human beings in a thundercloud of common crisis…”

As the characters engage with one another, it’s clear how much Williams is like the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who famously said, “My characters are galley slaves.” Rather than galley slaves, Williams bats his characters around like a cat playing with a dying mouse. Wilson delivers, much to his credit, a “Cat” that is cleaner and more modern feeling that skirts – rather than embraces – the overheated, parboiled, Southern gothic-ness often associated with Williams’ works.

Wilson also directs a version that hews closer to Williams’ original script, complete with frequent use of profanity, especially from the patriarchal Big Daddy. The profanity heightens the play’s raw emotional intensity and authenticity and helps convey the deep-seated frustrations and conflicts within the Pollitt family. We are fortunate to live in a time when producers or censors don’t remove or soften such language because it is too provocative for our tender ears.

Restoring that language, and even Big Daddy’s off-color “elephant” joke, enhances the play’s visceral impact and stark realism that Williams intended. This production is a successful example of the TWSTL’s mission to enrich the cultural life of St. Louis and celebrate the art and influence of Williams.

Producer Carrie Houk also cast this production, and her choices of actors is collectively strong. This well-cast play aligns its actors’ talents with Wilson’s interpretation of the characters to deliver authentic and compelling performances. The best of Houk’s choices is Kari Ely as Big Mama. Ely’s Big Mama is an award-worthy performance of a pivotal character. Ely’s acting was astonishing for her ability to bring both humor and vulnerability, as well as the depth of her personal suffering as she attempts to maintain a facade of strength and domestic harmony within the deteriorating Pollitt family. Ely projected her lines, running the gamut from the anguished cry to the stage whisper, with compelling compassion.

Big Daddy, a “Mississippi redneck” (per Maggie) is a role that can be allowed to be overplayed – or even overshadowed by Burl Ives from the filmed version. Peter Mayer avoids these pitfalls and delivers a once-powerful man now grappling with his own mortality and the disintegration of his family. Mayer’s raspy voice and stiff movements effectively convey a Lear-like Big Daddy, a character of contrasts – a mixture of bluster and vulnerability – who is dying of cancer but still able to rail futilely against the world. Mayer captures the dichotomy of a Big Daddy who is either pissing into the wind or onto an electric fence – or maybe both.

As Brick, Brian Slaten delivers the most physically challenging character in the play. Having broken his ankle the night before, Slaten impressively performs the entire play with – and sometimes without – a crutch. Slaten delivers a Brick hobbled by big daddy issues and alcoholism and haunted by his glory days as a star athlete and his special friendship with Skipper, with whom Maggie also shares an affinity. Slaten provides a Brick who sulky, hard and cracked; he understands the brick-like nature of his character – solid with others in a wall, brittle on its own.

Slaten is red faced throughout the performance, adding to the play’s realism and ambiguity. Is he red faced because he’s embarrassed by his emotional impotence or by his unattractive alcohol abuse? Slaten compellingly (though sometimes too quietly) captures Brick’s destructive tendencird to withhold his penis as much as his love as a way of coping with his situation. By play’s end, it’s unclear whether Brick has hit his alcoholic and personal bottom or whether there’s more misery to come.

Kiah McKirnan’s Maggie is not a slinky, alluring cat. Rather, like Bizet’s Carmen, she’s a complex and ambitious character, driven by both desperation and determination. In Williams’ script, Maggie wends her way through the Pollitt family dynamics, identifying with yet trying to avoid becoming the next-generation Big Mama, to achieve a dominating and personal position. McKirnan brings the audience along with her on this journey.

One of McKirnan’s best moments is when she says, “Don’t move that pillow. Leave it where it is.” The pillow represents a small, yet significant, boundary she wants to maintain as a symbol of her emotional and psychological struggle. McKirnan’s delivery of this line underscores Maggie’s sense of control and her attempt to assert some order in the midst of their tumultuous relationship.

There were other moments, especially in the first act, when such strong, clear-voiced delivery was much needed – clouded by either rushed or hushed lines. This was a weakness in this production and was not limited to McKirnan’s performance.

Eric Dean White and Roxanne Wellington as Gooper and Mae are parents to five “no necks” with a sixth on the way. White and Welllington portray them as the dynamic duo of calculated ambition and familial rivalry and the embodiments of the play’s themes of deception and materialism.

J Samuel Davis plays Doc Baugh, Rev Tooker and the Writer, a role not in Williams’ script. The Writer introduces the play and its setting as the crew sets up the stage. As a way to introduce this Festival’s production, the introduction is pleasant, but the play would not have suffered without it.

James Wolk’s set design is clean, cool and restrained. Wolk effectively blends and balances Mississippi antebellum artifice and a modern Southern style right out of a Magnolia Journal Magazine feature. The set design is augmented by lighting design by Matt McCarthy. The background lighting with cool tones highlights the warmer colors that bathe the actors and set – a very effective combination.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” is a play best set on a traditional stage, compared to previous TWSTL productions in a circus tent or on a fire escape. Williams and company have created a satisfying play the joins a lineage of eight other successful TWSTL productions, and one in which all of the characters embody the quandary posed by Maggie: “What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?...Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can.”

Swap she with they, and that’s the theme of this terrific performance.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” at the Grandel Theatre runs through August 18. See the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis website for more information.