There are few playwrights as revered as Tennessee Williams for a reason. Over his storied career, the master of the southern gothic was known for churning out enticing melodramas that gave its actors more than enough material to work with. To watch them recite dialogue was to witness poetry, a flow so gymnastic that the lines become musical. Everything about his work remains enticing even a near half-century after his death, leaving new generations to chew on some scenery while tackling taboo subject matter and exploring the dark side of humanity all in a night out at the theater.
Adding their name to that list is The Long Beach Playhouse, whose recent production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof finds one of Williams’ most famous works being adapted with fervent dedication. The three-act play manages to take its complicated themes around a dysfunctional marriage and enhance the claustrophobic nature of its demands. There is a need to prolong the family lineage, to provide some hope for the future as Big Daddy (Rick Kopps) contemplates whom he’s leaving the family ranch to. On the day of his 65th birthday, a lot of family drama pokes through in the most intimate of places: a bedroom. It’s at times uncomfortably frank, but all in the name of exploring the emotional weight personal secrets can have on every character on the stage.
It begins simply enough. Maggie (Gaelyn Wilkie) walks onto the stage in elegant evening attire. The only thing is that there’s a stain. The disrobing into her slip can be seen as salacious, but it’s fitting for the type of interaction she’s about to have with Brick (Jason Cook). He’s an ex-football star whose affection for Maggie is waning. Is it merely attraction or are there deeper roots to their disconnect from each other? Even as the actors provide steamy chemistry, there’s a divide. The sense of family barging in is expertly done from a door at the back of the stage that opens with Laugh-In style precision. There’s no moment that feels safe, where even kids (Bella Dorman, Sophia James Zavala) barge in with criticism of Maggie’s lack of progeny.
What makes the show work is how well it balances everyone’s personal conflict. The central couple especially is pitted against the family whose comic entrances have this dark subtext. It’s the pressure of a world outside trying to persuade them to conform, to follow suit even if it’s in a loveless way. As the show progresses, the idea of continuing the dysfunction becomes more frustrating, and by the third act, it becomes a brilliant piece of theater. Even for a piece about masculinity in the 50s, it manages to feel painfully relevant, finding the struggle of personal identity clashing with expectations and the shame certain revelations would bring.
Every actor brings something fulfilling to their roles. With a roundabout set-up, they wander the stage. Conversations overlap, overwhelming and coherent focus. Other times actors at the other side of the stage will laugh in a crass manner about someone’s misfortune. It ping-pongs from moment to moment in such a way that even when the action draws to a halt for quiet, vulnerable revelations it has this weight. Everything moves with such a walloping force yet manages to allow each actor to have their moment to become focalized. This is especially true of act two, where Brick and Big Daddy have a lengthy conversation that may linger and circle itself too many times, but develops just how deceptive everyone’s tactics are.
Credit goes especially to Kopps, who doesn’t make an official appearance until 2/3 of the way through the show. At most he is heard as this booming voice backstage, whose exchanges range from inappropriately comic to downright intrusive. By the time he enters, it is understood how much power he has over the family and how much he wishes to keep holding. By the time the story shifts to his birthday party, it’s hard to ignore his stubbornness. Kopps brings such a force, especially opposite Cook as they have one of the trashiest father-son relationships in 20th-century theater. Brick comes from a more reclusive point, so Big Daddy’s near exorcising of certain demons in act two is a brilliant piece of performance. There are layers with the tension emerging from silence and repetitive word choice that insinuates so much more than is being said.
As a piece of theater, it’s another excellent production by LBP that finds a largely green cast adding their talent to the list of reasons to keep track of their upcoming shows. There’s a lot to enjoy about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and they manage to capture the complexity of those emotions, finding vulnerability slowly itching to the surface and finding ridged yet satisfying ways to capture the small ways that everyone disappoints each other. For a birthday party set in a bedroom, there’s a lot of action happening, and what makes it better is the often busy details never feel burdened. In fact, it plays like the best of Williams, echoing irony under sincerity with such infectious force that you can’t help but love his sly achievements. The same is said for this cast and crew who deliver it with such a strong trajectory that even at three hours, it’s never dull or ponderous.
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