By Larry Smead
On a spring trip to New York City, we had the pleasure of seeing an off-Broadway performance of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. We were there to see Adam Dodway, a native of Lewisburg. Adam began his acting career at the Greenbrier Valley Theatre and has since gone on to perform in several productions in New York such as Brigadoon, Guys and Dolls, Fiddler on the Roof, and Look Homeward, Angel.
The play was performed at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, a small Episcopal church on 46th Street converted into a theater venue that holds around 150 people. The theater has hosted many notable productions and many notable actors such as Faye Dunaway, Dustin Hoffman, Nathan Lane, and Al Pacino, while maintaining the comfortable atmosphere of a community theater.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was first performed on Broadway in 1955, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It has since been revived in movies and theater productions throughout the world. The dialogue is intense, and the themes are woven with ambiguity and layered with illusion, lies, repressed sexuality, greed, and disappointment. Each production is different, and given the current social and political climate, producers and directors feel pressure not to offend audiences that still prefer that Lucy and Ricky Ricardo sleep in separate beds.
The play portrays the interactions of the Pollitt family who have gathered at their Mississippi Delta home to celebrate Big Daddy’s birthday. Central to the play is the relationship between Brick, the younger son, and his wife Maggie, the eponymous cat. Brick, overwhelmed with grief and guilt, has become a heavy drinker since the suicide of his close friend Skipper. Maggie spends much of the play trying to seduce Brick, who refuses to sleep with her. It is not clear whether she loves Brick or if she wants to secure her future with children. Maggie suspects that either Brick and Skipper had a passionate relationship or that out of shame, Brick has repressed his true feelings for Skipper.
Brick is Big Daddy’s favorite son and comes closest to self-realization in a moving conversation with his sympathetic father. In his youth, his father was a caretaker for the plantation when it was owned by two old men who “shared a tenderness that was uncommon.” They had no children and left the plantation to Big Daddy.
Understanding Cat on a Hot Tim Roof is troublesome because the text has been constantly edited, no more so than the movie version of the play starring Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie and Paul Newman as Brick. The movie was released in 1958, and because of Hays Code restrictions, any references to homosexuality were removed. The result was that the complex relationship between Maggie and Brick was diminished, and Big Daddy’s tolerant understanding of his son was diluted. The highlight of the movie was not Brick’s touching revelations to his father, but Elizabeth Taylor in a satin slip.
The recent production at St. Clement’s came closer to Williams’ original intentions. The distinguished cast included Courtney Henggeler, who is Amanda in Cobra Kai and was Sheldon’s twin sister Missy in The Big Bang Theory, as a sizzling Maggie. Big Mama was played by Alison Fraser, a two-time Emmy Award nominee; and Matt De Rogatis was a physical Brick. The role of Gooper, Brick’s greedy older brother, was played convincingly by our own Adam Dodway. Adam’s Gooper was petty and selfish, a perfect Kendall Roy, never missing a chance to portray his brother as an alcoholic, childless incompetent. Adam was so convincing that one can see why Big Daddy loves Brick best, and it was a pleasure to see Adam on a stage with such distinguished actors in such a distinguished venue.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of the America’s greatest plays. It is Tennessee Williams’ best, and as time passes, the topic matter becomes more relevant, and open discussion becomes more necessary. The dialogue is provocative, but as Maggie says to Brick, “Laws of silence don’t work. It’s just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning.” Williams’ masterpiece would be a worthy production for the Greenbrier Valley Theatre.
