Lukewarm on This "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"

Everything I’d read about the latest revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof promised that it was going to be a hot mess. The show’s top-billed star Scarlett Johansson kept hinting about how she wanted to tone down the sexiness of the character Maggie, who is known for her sexiness. In his interviews, her co-star Benjamin Walker, who plays Maggie’s alcoholic and perhaps closeted husband Brick, was saying that “bringing a sexuality and a vitality to the play” would distinguish it from previous productions. Notice any contradictions?

Meanwhile, their director Rob Ashford, better known for staging musicals than classic dramas, was reportedly experimenting with touches like ghost characters and musical numbers (click here to read gossip columnist Michael Riedel’s early account of that). 

So I’ll admit that when my friend Priscilla and I settled into our seats at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where the show is scheduled to play a limited run through March 30, I was prepared to wallow in the schadenfreude of it all. But guess what? The show isn’t as bad as I thought it would be or as bad as some of the critics have made it out to be, judging by the C- it scored on StageGrade, which aggregates the opinions of the city’s top reviewers (click here to read some of them).

 

This is not to say that the production is all that good either. But even a tepid production of Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play (his second to win the prize) is a reminder of just how great he really was.

Because of the 1958 movie, with an unabashedly sexy Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie and Paul Newman as Brick, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of the most familiar plays in the canon.  And Williams’ tale about the secrets and lies of a nouveau riche southern family gathered for what may be the final birthday of its patriarch is one of the most frequently revived. 

 

This is the sixth Broadway production since the original premiered in 1956. The standouts among them have been Elizabeth Ashley’s legendary turn in 1974, Kathleen Turner’s smoldering one in 1990 and an all-black version five years ago in which James Earl Jones stole the show as the domineering Big Daddy. 

 

The current production is unlikely to join that list of the memorable ones.  But it’s still an interesting effort. For the actors playing each of the principal family members—Maggie, Brick, Big Daddy and his wife Big Mama—have tried to come up with fresh takes on their now-iconic characters.

 

The temptation to do that is understandable.  Who wants to play—or see—the same old thing that has been done a zillion times? But there are some limitations.  First, any new interpretation must be rooted in the text. And second, it helps if the director coordinates the individual explorations that the cast members are making. Alas, there were lapses on both fronts in this production.

Having won a Tony three years ago for her supporting role as the niece in A View From the Bridge, Johansson was eager for a bigger challenge (click here to see an interview with her). Indeed, her sultry voice, curvaceous body and feisty personality make Johansson a natural for Maggie, who grew up in genteel poverty and will do whatever it takes to hold on to her place in the rich family she’s married into.  

But in her effort to be a different kind of Maggie, Johansson mutes the character to the point that Maggie’s impassioned desperation comes across as petty whining. Similarly, Walker, tall, lean and almost girlishly pretty, would seem to be an ideal Brick (click here to read about him).  But the role is mainly subtext and Walker just stays on the surface so that his Brick seems little more than a sullen rich boy who likes to drink. 

 

The stage vet Debra Monk completely reimagines Big Mama, who is usually played as an aging airhead totally cowed by her husband. But Monk’s Big Mama is so ballsy that it’s not hard to imagine her taking over the running of the family plantation and doing a decent job of it (click here to read an interview with her). It’s an interesting spin on the character but I’m not sure it was what Williams intended.

 

I had worried most about Ciarán Hinds, not so much because the actor is less physically imposing than previous Big Daddys have been or because he is Irish but because I had seen him in “Political Animals,” the TV series in which he played a Bill Clinton-like ex-president to Sigourney Weaver’s Hillary Clinton-like Secretary of State and Hinds’ accent and mannerisms were so over the top that I stopped watching midway through the pilot.  

 

But Hinds has toned down the cornpone for his rendition of Big Daddy.  He isn’t as crude or menacing as some of his predecessors have been in the role but Hinds is so honest in the man-to-man talk between father and son that it is not only the centerpiece of the second act but the best part of the entire evening (click here for a Q&A with him).  

 

It isn’t, however, enough to overcome the baffling things that Ashford has done to make the play his own. Both the onstage ghost and the interporlated songs had been cut by the time I saw the show.  But just as egregious was the decision to keep sound effects so intrusive that they often drowned out important lines in the dialog.  And don’t get me started on the “happy darkies” motif he's woven throughout the show.  

 

Even set designer Christopher Oram has been allowed to improvise—again to the detriment of the text.  The play has Maggie saying “walls have ears.” But there are few walls in sight. If there were as much transparency as all this set’s windows and gauzy material would suggest, lots of secrets would have been outed long ago. 

 

And yet, the pathos in Williams’ script still manages to claw its way out.  Some regular theatergoers gripe that Broadway gets too many revivals of plays like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But not me.  

I know that these old shows may be driving out some new shows (click here to see NYTimes theater reporter Patrick Healy's smart piece on this phenomenon) but I’m still envious of the opera lovers who get to see what different performers bring to their noblest warhorses season after season.  And so I’m already itching to see another production of this play—but I'm also hoping that one will bring more heat.

Fishburne Brings the Goods to "Thurgood"

Making fun of movie stars who sign up for Broadway shows is something of a blood sport for the theaterati. But over the past few weeks, I think I’ve begun to understand those film actors a little better. If they’re truly talented and if they really care about their craft, how much satisfaction can they get from just cavorting in front of a blue screen, issuing imperious commands, saving the world over and over again as the big blockbuster movies that now dominate Hollywood demand they do?

So it makes sense to me that Professor Xavier of the “X-Men” series and Morpheus of “The Matrix” movies are currently appearing on Broadway. And Patrick Stewart (Xavier) and Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus) are not only nourishing their own creative souls but also treating audiences to superb performances in, respectively, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Thurgood, the one-man show about the civil rights attorney and the nation’s first black Supreme Court Justice that opened Wednesday night at the Booth Theatre.

Both actors are truly talented and masters of their craft who not only have appeared on Broadway in the past but have been nominated for Tonys. And I’m betting that they’ll be nominated this year too. Fishburne actually won a Tony with his Broadway debut in 1992 as an ex-con in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running. And seven years later, he made a splendid and regal Henry II opposite Stockard Channing’s Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter. Although I confess what I most remember about the latter performance was Fisburne’s stepping out of character to dress down an audience member whose ringing cell phone interrupted an intense scene between the royal pair. Channing seemed taken aback but the audience burst into supportive applause.

Fishburne stays brilliantly in character during Thurgood. The play was written by George Stevens, Jr., the film and TV producer whose credits include the annual “The Kennedy Center Honors” broadcast and the popular “The American Film Institute Life Achievement Awards.” But back in 1991, Stevens also produced, directed and wrote the TV movie “Separate But Equal” about the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that legally ended segregation in the U.S. Sidney Poitier played Marshall, who, as the lead attorney for the NAACP, argued the case before the Court. Stevens has said that his continuing interest in Marshall lead him to write a play, his first, about him.

The resulting 90-minute piece is presented as a lecture that the elderly Justice gives about his life at his alma mater Howard University. Thurgood trades on Marshall’s reputation as a raconteur and it’s nicely salted with humorous tales. But it still comes off as one of those Ken Burns-style documentaries you might see on PBS or the History Channel, complete with video projections of relevant scenes—a sharecroppers’ shack when he talks about his travels through the segregated south; pretty brown-skinned flappers when he describes meeting his first wife; the steps of the Supreme Court when he recalls his first visit there.

You need a great actor to bring a work like this to anything approaching dramatic life. James Earl Jones leant his commanding presence to the role when the play was originally produced at the Westport Country Playhouse in 2006 but, apparently, opted to do the all-black revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof instead of bringing Thurgood to Broadway. Luckily, the producers persuaded Fishburne to step in. Fishburne, who is only 47, wasn’t even born when the Court handed down the unanimous Brown decision and he has admitted in several interviews (click here to read one he gave New York magazine) that he knew very little about Marshall before accepting the role. But he looks eerily like the Justice and he uses both his acting chops and movie-star charisma to draw the audience into Marshall’s story.

I’ve just finished reading Jeffrey Toobin’s terrific new book “The Nine,” which focuses on recent Supreme Court justices but includes a sizable cameo on Marshall, and so his story wasn’t new to me but I still had a good time. Like Golda’s Balcony, the one-woman show about the former Israeli Prime Minister that opened in 2003, Thurgood clearly intends to educate as much as entertain. And it does a fairly good job of both. “You learn so much,” I overheard a woman saying as we all made our way out of the theater. But unlike Golda’s Balcony, which starred the stage stalwart Tovah Feldshuh and played 493 performances, Thurgood is scheduled for a limited run that is now set to end on June 22. After that, Fishburne, alas for theater lovers, is heading back to making movies.

A Skittish "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"

The choreography of a curtain call can tell you a lot about a show. The last bow traditionally goes to the starring role. But sometimes it just goes to a star, the biggest name in the show or the one whose face on the poster producers think will sell the most tickets. There are three Tony winners in the all black revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that opened at the Broadhurst Theatre this week. But neither Anika Noni Rose, who plays Maggie, the wife desperate to seduce a disinterested and possibly gay husband; nor Phylicia Rashad, who plays Big Mama, her chatterbox mother-in-law; nor James Earl Jones, who plays Big Daddy, the tyrannical and dying head of the clan, gets to walk on last. Instead, that honor goes to Terrence Howard, an actor making his stage debut in the role of Brick, the husband and son who tries to drown his unhappiness in alcohol.

Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of a wealthy but self-delusional southern family is sometimes played as Maggie’s story. And sometimes as Big Daddy’s. But, although he is the objective of their attention and actions, it is seldom Brick’s story. And it isn’t this time either. This is not to say that Howard embarrasses himself; he doesn’t. He turns in a performance that is obviously well thought out, perhaps a touch too much so. But that’s not why he’s getting top billing. It’s because two years ago, Howard won an Oscar nomination for his performance in the movie “Hustle & Flow” as a pimp who dreams of making it big as a rapper. The Cat producers clearly hope that his movie star looks and hip reputation will draw young audiences eager to see him in person even if they’ve never heard of Tennessee Williams. And Howard seems to have the kind of ego that probably made the billing a deal-breaker for his taking the part. Even though the show is a limited run, scheduled to end on June 15, Howard is planning to take off April 15 to May 22 to promote an upcoming movie (click here to read a revealing interview he gave New York magazine).

My sister, who rates Cat as her favorite Tennessee Williams play (I’m an A Streetcar Named Desire gal), really wanted to see the show but developed a bad case of the flu and so gave her ticket to my 28 year-old niece Jennifer, who’s the exact demographic— young, black and into pop culture—the producers were hoping to woo. And the audience the night we went was certainly more diverse—in age and color—than most Broadway audiences tend to be. Jennifer and I grabbed a quick dinner at the venerable theater eatery Sardi’s before the show. We went there because she got off from work late and it’s right across the street from the Broadhurst. We saw several young black couples at other tables whom we later spotted in the Cat audience. Although Jennifer, addicted to the mussels and the more casual ambience at Angus McIndoe, wasn’t all that impressed with eating at Sardi’s, not even when I tried to point out some of her favorite actors among the trademark caricatures that adorn the restaurant’s walls. But she liked the show so much that she actually went home and put the 1958 movie version, with Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie, Paul Newman as Brick and Burl Ives as Big Daddy, on her Netflix list of movies to rent.

I was a little less impressed. Ray Klausen’s cramped set didn’t really work, William H. Grant III’s lighting worked too hard and too many of Debbie Allen’s directorial choices didn’t quite make sense—I still don’t know why a saxophonist walked across the stage at the beginning of the show. But the biggest disappointment for me was Rose’s Maggie. The actress looks terrific in her skin-baring lingerie but her portrayal of this fascinating character is only skin deep. It's the old pros Rashad and Jones who save the day. She brings a poignancy to the role of Big Mama, making her less a fool and more a woman who is knowingly trying to fill any vacant silences before things are said that shouldn’t be. And he brings the age-defying sexiness of a self-made man who has clawed his way to power and revels in the pleasure of throwing it around. The fact that they are African-American isn't addressed head-on and nor should it be; but it does add extra texture and tension and that's a good thing.

Critics were split on the production. But, despite its faults, this is a crowd-pleaser of a show. And I don’t mean that in a condescending way. There really can be wisdom in crowds. The inevitable standing ovation began when Rashad, second from last, walked on the stage for her final bow. And the cheers for Jones actually greeted his entrance. When he walked on for his bow at the end, the audience roared with delight. By the time Howard came on, he seemed almost an afterthought.