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 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Melbourne Theatre Company
Playhouse, The Arts Centre
(Until September 13)
To celebrate the 65th birthday and apparent all-clear from cancer test of millionaire plantation owner ‘Big Daddy’ Pollitt (Chris Haywood), his sons Gooper (Grant Piro) and Brick (Martin Henderson) gather at the family home with their wives Mae and Margaret.
Gooper’s wife, Mae (Rebekah Stone) is pregnant with their sixth child but Brick and ‘Maggie’ (Essie Davis) are childless, and their marriage is on the rocks. Brick is an alcoholic, his leg in plaster following a drunken stunt, and indifferent to his beautiful wife. Maggie is crazy for love of him, and in the opening scene confronts him with the truth about his indifference.
Brick had been close to a high school buddy, Skipper, who inexplicably committed suicide. Maggie had also confronted Skipper shortly before his death, and discovered that he was as in love with Brick as her. They slept together, Skipper desperate to prove his heterosexuality; but, as she tells Brick, they “made love both thinking it was with you!”
Themes of hypocrisy and deceit runs deep through the play; the truth about Big Daddy’s cancer is kept from him and his wife Big Momma (Deidre Rubenstein), and family love masks greed; but - emphasised by the constant presence of Brick and Maggie’s bed - sexual hypocrisy and homophobia are what electrify this play. The bed belonged to the original plantation owners, a male couple, and Brick, unnerved by Maggie’s revelations, finally explodes when Big Daddy questions him about Skipper as well: “You think me an’ Skipper did… sodomy together?” he yells, the first time the subject was brought overtly centre-stage in theatre.
The set – which is dominated by the bed that the author, Tennessee Williams, insisted should haunt the room with the ghost of those two men’s love - has mouldering green walls that give it the added appearance of a prison; magnificently complimenting the baroque excess of Williams’ writing and Gale Edwards’s direction.
The acting is unsubtle in a positive way: the long but important speeches are delivered like arias from centre stage, beginning with Davis’ superb account of Maggie’s opening speech. Henderson’s sullen Brick is equally superb in his outbursts, suggesting the fear and panic of his desire, as well as Brick’s angry denials.
www.mtc.com.au
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