BWW Reviews: ACT's CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Not All That Hot

Tennessee Williams' searing southern drama, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" currently playing at ACT, opens with Brick (Brandon O'Neill) and his wife Maggie (Laura Griffith) in a heated conversation about the disintegrating state of their marriage and is filled with sexual tension. Or at least it should be. Unfortunately the relationship of Griffith and O'Neill's Maggie and Brick feels so stale and desperately one-note that there's nowhere for the characters to go. In fact it wasn't until Act Two that the play held much interest for me and really got into the richness of some of these characters.

It's the night of Big Daddy's (John Aylward) 65th Birthday and the family has gathered to celebrate. But there's more afoot than a birthday celebration as the family deals with the recent health issues of Big Daddy. Big Mama (Marianne Owen) assures the family that all the tests have come back negative for anything serious but there's more than the family is letting on. Meanwhile Brick and Maggie's relationship dwindles especially since the death of Brick's longtime close friend Skipper and Brick has taken to drinking to numb the pain of his life and all of the lies surrounding him.

It can be a story teaming with seething innuendo and passion but the opening Act, which needs to set that tone, fell flat. This is partially due to the staging from Kurt Beattie who kept putting Brick and Maggie on opposite sides of the room. Yes their relationship is not good but this should be a cat and mouse game of Maggie trying to seduce Brick back but they rarely got near each other to try. But Griffith also didn't help the tone, as she started off as desperate and intense and stayed there for the entire show. Maggie should eventually get there but the deliciousness of these characters is in their complexity and there was no complexity there.

As I said, the show does manage to pick up considerably in Act Two with a beautifully played confrontation between Aylward and O'Neill. Aylward manages such a commanding presence yet rife with such vulnerability that you can't take your eyes off him. And O'Neill seems to come alive when faced with such an imposing force making his Brick equally rich and engaging. Owen too turns in a gorgeous performance as a woman desperately and sometimes blindly grasping at her marriage and family. And Charles Leggett and Morgan Rowe make for lovely scheming adversaries as Brick's brother Gooper and his ever-pregnant wife Mae.

O'Neill and Griffith recently starred opposite each other as troubled lovers in the 5th Avenue Theatre's "Carousel" and had about as much chemistry there as they do here, which is to say none at all. And without that chemistry the relationship between Brick and Maggie, as bad as it is, makes little sense and garners even less interest. Granted there are some wonderful moments in the show which is why with my three letter rating system I give it a MEH+ but without that central relationship the show just kind of lays there making this more of a cat comfortably resting on a tepid tin roof.

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" performs at ACT through May 17th. For tickets or information contact the ACT box office at 206-292-7676 or visit them online at www.acttheatre.org.

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