When Elliott Raines founded Two Chairs Theater Company last year, it was to present yearly an outstanding play in a minimalist production stressing its author’s writing. With Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, director Raines brings out both Tennessee Williams’s substance and style, exploring the theme of mendacity in characters who live lies and without a moral center.
Because of its candidness at its time about sexual desire and especially homosexuality, critics and promoters of the play have emphasized these. Elliott rightly makes his actors show them as related to their characters’ primary desire for gain (in Big Daddy’s family’s case, his estate) for themselves and relevant posterity. Brick seems the only exception (which is why Rafael Petlock rightly must seem passive for so long). Yet he may be trying to lie to himself about his dead friend Skipper’s homosexuality, his own tendencies, and how—by cutting off a phoned plea—he “immorally” denied the friendship Skipper needed. With her sustained handling of cogent language as well as sexy good looks (Kathryn Parks’s appreciable assets), Maggie is Williams’s most powerful liar. Her pregnant sister-in-law Mae (Lauren Ward, right on), though just as avaricious a cat, can’t get a grasp on the symbolic roof of Big Daddy’s house. She lies about her affection for him and has trained her obnoxious kids to do the same and also spy on Maggie and Brick. As her equally devious husband Gooper, who resents Brick, Ross Boehringer completely absorbs his role, whether at first eloquently silent or at last revealing his calculated take-over plans. Big Mama seems to really love her husband but lies to herself about his illness and feelings about her. Lynne Doyle conveys Mama’s emotions winningly. If she seems a bit prettier than called for, it’s clear from her youthful fashion and abundance of diamond jewelry that her first love may be the shopping noted by Big Daddy. Allen Kretschmar justifies the adjective in his name. He believes mendacity is the big lie he’s had to sustain all his life. What he really cares for are his riches and what he soon may use them for. When Big Daddy thinks he’s no longer on death’s doorstep, he reveals all the hates he’s truly had. His listeners include Paul Hutchison’s hardly religious Reverend Tooker and Twig Webster’s Doctor Baugh, long too timid to warn of the truth. As they’re dismissed when truth is exposed, the action reverts to Maggie and Brick. Where does her new, her biggest lie to Big Daddy lead the couple? Will mendacity rule? Technically, minimalism here isn’t as minimal as one might anticipate. There’s projection, but used properly and not overdone—for a nighttime plantation greenery background and for birthday fireworks. Structures like doorways are simply frames and enclose appropriate props. Costumes bespeak each of the characters. All in all, fitting for an excellent work of art, well reproduced.
