Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Almeida Theatre, London

Writer: Tennessee Williams

Director: Rebecca Frecknall

For the second time this month, a grand piano is the centrepiece of a non-musical drama; first, the Orange Tree had its cast edge around the piano in its production of Twelfth Night, and now Rebecca Frecknall’s anticipated adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof uses the instrument to create ghostly echoes of the past, haunting characters unable to move beyond this moment in their lives and dragged backwards into who they used to be. A feature of Frecknall’s theatre, along with the ticking metronome that has specifically featured in her previous adaptations of Williams, this musical emphasis takes a while to inveigle its way through this revival, but it sets Act Two ablaze.

Brought together for the 65^th birthday of Big Daddy at his plantation home, his adult sons and their wives know the doctors have lied to their father about his condition, and he has very little time to live. Across a single afternoon and evening, the Pollitts fight over who is loved the most and who should inherit his $10 million fortune, but it is Maggie who is most determined to win back her alcoholic husband Brick and their share of the estate.

Frecknall has earned her reputation as one of the great interpreters of Williams’ work with hugely acclaimed productions of both Summer and Smoke and A Streetcar Named Desire, both for the Almeida and both transferring to the West End. Now, before Frecknall departs for the Old Vic with Artistic Director Rupert Goold in a year’s time, she directs Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and to say the overall impact of this revival doesn’t quite live up to its predecessors is true, but this is in the minor details that affect the unfolding psychology of character and family dynamics rather than any lack of purpose in the approach.

There are some strong secondary performances from Clare Burt as Big Mamma and Pearl Chanda as Mae, who leach some of the silliness from the usual presentation of these characters and instead give them credible motives in a production that is thoughtful about the role of each family member. Dramatising Skipper as a ghostly presence always in the room adds very little, as Williams already forces his influence through the play anyway, and there are a lot of people, relationships, histories and motivations to keep track of in a small space.

Acts One and Three are complicated, establishing and concluding conversations, dialogue-heavy pieces that twist and shift as the different factions in the house vie for power and self-control in all its forms in this play. Act One here is by far the weakest, the relationship between Maggie and Brick struggling for purchase; the audience can believe they are at odds now, yet it never quite feels like they were ever (and recently) great lovers.

Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Maggie does almost all of the talking, a chattering energy that tries to fill the gaping holes in her marriage and the past no one will talk about. But the actor gives too much all of the time, words flow, but there is no sense of the sharp corner turns in Maggie’s speech as her scattered thoughts take the conversation in circles nor any sense of fear in her eyes that even the smallest breath might let Brick escape her. Maggie is hard and determined, but she must also be soft and alluring, using all her tricks to win him back, wanting to be physically close to him, which this Maggie for all her crawling cat gestures never is, and it leaves her nowhere to go later in the story.

But it is Act Two, the intense confrontation between father and son, that brings the fireworks that Big Daddy’s birthday has been leading up to. Williams is so brilliant on male vulnerability, especially when women are absent from the space, and finding that balance between machismo and tenderness has been a feature of Frecknall’s adaptations. Here, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lennie James provide a riveting hour of drama, a duologue also filled with circularity but one that incrementally chips away at the reserves of both men who see one another fully for the first time in all their flawed, broken honesty. As Brick becomes increasingly drunk, this discussion captures those wonderful changes of pace, from cajoling and confiding to violent physicality so lacking in Act One, setting up the final family fallout in Act Three.

Runs until 1 February 2024