A play about love and the status quo

Twin Beach Players tackle ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'

Friday, April 23, 2010

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo Maggie (Bess Wilkins) tries everything to get her husband, Brick (Luke Woods), to take her seriously in the Twin Beach Players's production of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Luke Woods, left, plays Brick and Tom Wines appears as Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Nearly a year has passed since Bess Wilkins, Luke Woods and Tom Wines powered a riveting rendition of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" within a quaint playhouse otherwise known as Holland Point Civic Center. The Twin Beach Players's cast also included Kevin McAndrews and Regan Cashman, who performed lesser roles but were no less convincing.

Audiences will find the same, talented core in TBP's staging of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" — another classic with nary a dull moment — and the combination once again produces a compelling show.

The three-week run of the 1955 Pulitzer Prize winner will conclude Sunday afternoon.

The crowning theme of Williams' play is mendacity. The highly flawed hero, Brick (Woods), a former football star nursing a broken ankle, says its dominant presence in the universe is the very reason he's downing one highball after another in straight succession. On the other hand, he prefers his marriage on the rocks.

The play is set on Big Daddy Pollitt's (Wines) huge plantation in Mississippi but unfolds entirely in a bedroom occupied, for the time, by his son Brick and Brick's wife (Wilkins). The bed is planted in the center of a satisfactory set bookended by a makeup station and dresser loaded with booze. Stage right, extending back along the seating: a balcony where we imagine the breeze might lift up the drapes (though it's mainly a venue for eavesdropping). Since "One Flew," the performance space has shifted, perhaps to make use of the ceiling fan, ever-swirling above the bed.

It's Big Daddy's 65th birthday, and the family has come together to attempt celebrating it during a turbulent, boozy night awash with conspiracy. Doctors, for example, are telling Big Daddy his incurable cancer is really just a spastic colon. His eldest son, Gooper (McAndrews), and Gooper's wife Mae (Cashman) are eyeing his money, while their three children (Molly Prusia, Megan Prusia and Mickey Cashman) run around creating a clamor.

Brick's alcoholism, the audience learns, really started after the death of his best friend, Skipper. Witty, wily Maggie — a cat stuck on a hot tin roof — leads the effort to resuscitate his spirit, while Big Daddy (who prefers him over Gooper) and Big Mama (who infantilizes him) try desperately as well.

Brick suggests Maggie simply jump. But she won't: She grew up poor; she's too invested.

Wilkins knows how to walk the line, too, as Maggie's persistence lapses into sheer frustration and loops back. Woods, in turn, aptly handles Brick's preference for silence, though he was even more persuasive when his character would fly off the handle.

Interestingly, Wines slightly resembles the actor Burl Ives, who played Big Daddy in the 1958 film. Beyond that, he shows he's more than capable of mixing Big Daddy — a mighty man who thinks self worth and net worth are one and the same — into his repertoire.

Big Daddy repeats, "The human animal is a beast that dies." Brick tells him the truth he really knew all along — his life is coming to an end — and Big Daddy's narcissism becomes only more lyrical … and empty. (His field hands, meanwhile, are outside trying to sing him happy birthday.) We see, meanwhile, from whom Brick learned to be mean to his wife.

Williams's plays of dysfunction mirrored his own life. He grew up in Mississippi. He was gay. His father drank a lot and favored his younger brother. His mother suffered from psychological disorders. His sister spent her life in an insane asylum.

The most engaging moments in "Cat" are the ones when discussions turn frank. One such instance is when Big Daddy indirectly accuses Brick of having an "unnatural" relationship with Skipper. In comes the straight talk, a denial: Brick, holding himself up with a crutch, yells so loud his face turns an even darker shade of red.

Though the real facts are unclear, Williams' bigger statement rings clear as bell: The men of this play, emotionally speaking, are in love with other men. All the while, the women strive desperately for status quo and its accompanying niceties — none more so than Big Mama, a hysteric portrayed with palpable energy by Elizabeth McWilliams.

In lighter moments, Big Mama was also what we call hysterical. Still, McWilliams performance is one that lingers in the mind. Her character is too committed to striving for something out of reach to ever say this — no matter how true it is.

Big Mama is like a cat on a hot tin roof.

If you go

Directed by Gary Adamsen and produced by Sid Curl and Regan Cashman, the Twin Beach Players's performance of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" will conclude at 8 p.m. April 23 and 24 and 3 p.m. April 25 at Holland Point Civic Center, 919 Walnut Ave., Holland Point. Tickets are $15, $12 for military, students and senior citizens. Call 410-474-4214.