Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Perth Season

With the audience immersed and sweating at the restless scenes of the sweltering South, it’s no wonder the season of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer-winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been extended by popular demand. The Black Swan State Theatre Company, in co-production with the Queensland Theatre Company, proudly presents this American classic.

Black Swan State Theatre Company (and Queensland Theatre Company) Venue: Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre of Western Australia
Wednesday 14 September 2011
With the audience immersed and sweating at the restless scenes of the sweltering South, it’s no wonder the season of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer-winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been extended by popular demand. The Black Swan State Theatre Company, in co-production with the Queensland Theatre Company, proudly presents this American classic.
Cruel patriarch Big Daddy is dying of cancer, unbeknownst to him, while his greedy and deceitful relatives and in-laws prematurely scheme for his 28,000 acres of the richest land in the Mississippi Delta. Big Daddy’s former golden son Brick uses alcoholism to battle with his deceased friend Skipper’s unclean passions. Seated in the young Heath Ledger Theatre, it’s difficult not to draw parallels between Brick’s search for pure, clean masculinity and the powerfully controversial film Brokeback Mountain. Meanwhile, he fends off his spirited wife Maggie’s uncontrollable lust as she struggles with implications of impotence.  
Tennessee Williams’ subject matter is confronting but not uncomfortable. His play isn’t shy to brutally expose the human condition, everything from the “odour of mendacity” to the Existential concept of Man’s consciousness of mortality. Demonstrated via verbose and cyclical dialogue, untruths become lucid when contrasted with Tom O’Sullivan’s silent, brooding Brick. The desperately taboo themes are riddled with a scathing, sneaky humour – which the audience animatedly responded to.  
The play is preoccupied with the dynamic, intense relationships between key characters, predominantly Maggie and Brick, and Big Daddy and Brick. Act One is driven by Cheree Cassidy who thrives in the role of impassioned and “catlike” Maggie, while John Stanton impeccably fuels Act Two as the dominant Big Daddy. Every exchange with Brick builds a genuinely fragile father/son relationship and the entire cast portray characters likeably flawed by human nature. 
The performance follows one long evening in a single, steamy room. The proscenium arch stage isn’t altered, but contains quiet intricacies as background action and constant movement opens the space. A digital screen featuring a pregnant moon, a brief storm, and celebratory fireworks enhances the drama. This electric spin on Bruce McKinven’s otherwise authentic set forces the performers to lather the believability on thick; and they don’t disappoint. 
Designed as realistic, David Murray’s lighting witnesses minimal changes and Ben Collins’ sound design is strongly internal, making use of a record player and noises of clocks, crickets and offstage children. These subtle technical elements pave the way for devotion to the lengthy monologues and Melissa Agnew’s dialect coaching, which developed strong but in no way unpleasant Southern accents to accompany the vibrantly characteristic discourse.  
Alarmingly funny and timelessly relatable, Kate Cherry has directed the indisputably talented cast to waste no motion and leave no innuendo unscrutinised in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Tennessee Williams possessed a forte for being delicately profound and refreshingly honest, and that is fully conveyed through this adaptation of the crippled Pollitt family’s chaos. Thank goodness the season’s been prolonged, yes siree Bob!  
Bookings: www.bsstc.com.au Saturday 10 September – Sunday 2 October 2011