2 weeks Ago
Tennessee Williams stands as a titan of the American theatre, and for good reason. His fiery plays, about the American South and the traumas families inflict on each other, still feel alive seventy-five years on. And what keeps a play alive is this: designers to give it shape, actors to speak its words, and an audience to bear it fresh witness.
Right now, Williams’ classic play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof lives at Westside Players. If you’re a fan of the theatre and you’ve never seen the play before, you owe it to yourself to see it shaped and spoken. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play centering on a tense evening in the Pollitt household, somewhere in the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1955.
Troubled scion Brick (Bart Nawotniak) and his wife Maggie (Regina Champion) are in a kind of cold war which Maggie (nicknamed ‘the Cat’) would very much like to heat up. Meanwhile, Big Mama (Diana Potter) is worried about a potential cancer diagnosis for wealthy plantation owner Big Daddy (Norm Schroder). Older brother and lesser son Gooper (Steven Moldenhauer) and his scheming wife Mae (Madison Guthrie) aren’t content to wait for the contents of the medical report—they’re already positioning themselves for the inheritance.
Meanwhile, houseguests Reverend Tooker (Ron Torres) and Doctor Baugh (Skip Taft) are uncomfortably party to all of this family drama. Director Camile Thomsen brilliantly conveys the lack of privacy in the Pollitt household. You can see it as soon as you enter the theatre.
Thomsen’s set, designed by David Hance, consists of a bedroom and the doors that open onto it: a bathroom door, a door that leads outside, and several doors that lead further into the house. In an inspired touch, all of these doors are merely frames, through which the rooms and hallways beyond are plainly visible. This means, for instance, that when Mae is eavesdropping on Maggie’s pleas to Brick, you can clearly see her.
The stark black-and-white color scheme of the set also serves to emphasize this invasion of privacy, popping the characters out from the monochromatic background. The characters themselves are well-realized by a cast of veteran actors. Big Daddy feels like a role written for Schroder, who thunders the patriarch’s scornful monologues and also conveys a genuine emotional connection to his son, Brick.
Big Mama is a similarly ideal role for Potter, who’s masterfully adept at both maternal domination and histrionic grief. Torres makes a big impression with his preacher’s mannered, fluttering hands and carefully enunciated syllables, and Taft’s nervous physician is just-right casting. Guthrie, who often plays sweethearts, is delightfully cast against type as a conniving climber.
Opposite her, Steven Moldenhauer’s smarmy Gooper is appropriately odious. Regina Champion usually plays the role of Maggie, but on review night, understudy Jessica Hottman bravely stepped into the role–kudos for making the show go on. Finally, this is some career-best work from Natwotniak as Brick.
It’s a devilishly complex role which delves into Brick’s struggle with alcoholism and repressive attitudes about homosexuality, and Nawotniak rises to the occasion. Some of the highest praise I can give a show is when it seems like the cast and crew understood the assignment, and that’s certainly the case here. Congratulations to Thomsen and her team for bringing this classic to life.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof plays through February, weekends at the Warehouse..
