Review of: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Thankfully Anika Noni Rose lives up to her name in this latest production of Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She comes up smelling like the flower of her namesake in this otherwise tepid, by-the-numbers hash of a revival. Most of the damage inflicted is the director Debbie Allen's doing but more of that later. Its best to concentrate on Ms. Rose's vibrant yet strong as nails Maggie the Cat.

Williams' theme throughout much of his work was the search for truth even when that knowledge kills. Deception versus truth-seeking is the engine that drives all his plays and no character ever embodied it better than Maggie Pollitt. Though sexually frustrated in her marriage to Brick (Terrence Howard), Maggie must conceive a child in order to stay in the inheritance game for the Pollitt's Mississippi plantation. Her father-in-law Big Daddy (James Earl Jones) is slowly and unknowingly dying of cancer and Brick is slowly and willingly drinking himself to death over the death (suicide?) of his best friend and platonic lover Skipper. Meanwhile, Brick's unloved brother Gooper (GianCarlo Esposito) and his harridan wife Mae (Lisa Arrindell Anderson) already have five "no-neck" monsters as Maggie puts it and are awaiting a sixth. Its one big hot house of sexual frustration and greed and as Big Daddy puts it "stinking of mendacity!" A soap opera? You betcha! And a masterpiece to boot.

The entire first act belongs to Maggie and is essentially an aria. Rose with her musical background (Caroline, or Change; Dreamgirls) runs with it. Stalking the stage like a caged lioness looking for her young, she never lets herself or Brick (or the audience) forget the amount of work she has put into getting where she is today. Like Scarlet O'Hara, she refuses to allow herself to return to the genteel poverty of her past. Wearing nothing but a clinging white silk slip, she tries on and discards outfits as if she were hunting for the appropriate costume to wear into battle. As she tries every trick in the book to arouse Brick out of his alcoholic stupor and show some sexual interest in her, she is mesmerizing. Rather small in stature, she does have some trouble in projecting the heady voluptuousness that Maggie needs but makes up for it with a blend of steely fragility. When she leaves at the end of Act I, she takes the play with her.

Sadly, it's a slow descent into mendacity (the acting sort) from here. Without Ms. Rose to captivate us, director Allen's gaffes loom large. Her staging is awkward at best with movement snarling into traffic jams at points (to her defense, however she is not helped whatsoever by Ray Klausen's clunky set with Brick and Maggie's king size bed center stage (metaphor alert!!). Even more detrimental is her determination to go for a laugh whenever possible at times giving this American classic the feel of an overblown Tyler Perry movie. The result conditions the audience to laugh at inappropriate moments. The other actors in this ensemble seem to have been left to fend for themselves with varying degrees of success. James Earl Jones still of majestic local powers gets Big Daddy's bluster and vulgarity convincingly correct (willingly playing to the audience at every chance) but has difficulty shifting into his more subtle moments. His climactic scene with Brick, however, confronting him about his alcoholism and tiptoeing around the issue of homosexuality is both moving and powerful as befits this stage icon. Stage neophyte (albeit fine film star) Terrence Howard is able to acquit himself with dignity throughout even though he tends to confuse the techniques of the different mediums. He's just a little too soft focus even for someone who is drunk for most of the evening. Luckily, he comes off best when he shares his scenes with Ms. Rose or Mr. Jones (most of the time). Phylicia Rashad as Big Momma squalls and brays her way through her role so unrelentingly that it comes as a shock that she is outdone in the overdone department by Lisa Arrindell Anderson's shrill, one-note performance as Mae. It's a testament to GianCarlo Esposito's Gooper that he manages to come away unscathed working with these two cartoons.

The most all out winning aspect of the evening is that the cast is all black proving that great works of theater are truly color blind and themes as potent as greed and mendacity know no racial boundaries. And as long as the incandescent Anika Noni Rose can keep her "balance" on that hot tin roof; Tennessee Williams' play remains white hot.

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