Review: CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF at The Grandel Opens the 9th Annual Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

The 9th Annual Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis opened on Thursday evening with stunning production of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. Acclaimed director Michael Wilson has tailored a blistering production with a talented group of local actors to tell Williams’ story of lies deceit, sexual repression, strained familial relationships, and mortality. The highly anticipated production continues at The Grandel Theatre through August 18th as part of the festival events.  

Wilson is a famed interpreter of Tennessee William’s works. He told Broadway World in a previous interview that this was the third time he has directed a production of CAT ON A HOT TINE ROOF. He talked about his ongoing eager curiosity with Williams’ works, calling his plays shocking and electrifying. He said, “The profound experiences he had in St. Louis shaped his cannon of work and is the reason I wanted to come to St. Louis to direct this show.” 

His interpretation of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF” has an added character that Wilson calls “The Writer” (J. Samuel Davis). The Writer introduces the playwright to the audience. He tells of William’s young adult life working in a shoe factory and shares a bit about how he got started as a playwright.  

The Writer also gives stages directions regarding the set pieces and the props. As he describes the set, members of the cast, dressed as stagehands in black shirts and jeans, handle props and move set pieces onto the stage. They assemble James Wolk’s elegant set, turning a blank canvas into a spacious and luxuriously appointed guest bedroom. 

While the narration was not critical to the story, it gave the audience an introduction to Williams. It explained who was pictured in the portrait hanging over the bed, and placed a spotlight on Wolk’s ravishing set creation of an exquisite bedroom inside the Mississippi Delta plantation. Before he leaves the stage, The Writer introduces the audience to ‘Maggie the cat.’   

The entrancing Maggie (Kiah McKirnan) slinks through the door stage left. She begins to take off her white lace dress that was stained at dinner, and strips down to the character’s quintessential look in a white slip and stockings. 

While getting undressed she calls out to her husband Brick (Brian Slaten) who is showering. Brick emerges from the bathroom. Their initial exchange signals the type of emotionally charged relationship that exists between the two. She is a sexually frustrated siren and he’s a disinterested handsome former athlete.  

McKirnan and Slaten are exceptional as the sexually frustrated wife and the miserable alcoholic husband. Their tension filled portrayals are charged with annoyance, disaffection, and rage toward one another. Their exchanges become physically threatening and violent. Maggie drips of desperation and Brick’s disdain is unmistakable, all leading to hostility. 

McKirnan is a fantastic actor and effectively paints a portrait of a despondent woman in a loveless marriage. Her faster-than-expected pattern of speech is not exactly what one expects from a southern dialect. Her soft voice does not project and her dialogue doesn’t play to the back of the house. It was difficult to hear her clearly, even seated in the third-row, house left. The issue was further complicated when she turned her back on sections of the audience executing Wilson’s blocking on the thrust stage. 

The Grandel theater is a 454-seat off-Broadway sized house with seating around three sides of a thrust stage. Wilson’s blocking and Wolk’s set design faced house right center. For a significant amount of time, the performers had their backs turned to house right or house left. Most of the cast projected well enough to be heard, but there were times dialogue was difficult to hear or lost. It is certainly one of the challenges faced by the director and sound designer when an audience will be seated around three sides of the stage.

That one issue aside, Wilson’s direction, staging, blocking, and story interpretation is phenomenal. He garners strong performances from the entire cast. Slaten manufactures combustible energy with McKirnan, Peter Mayer (Big Daddy), and Kari Ely (Big Mama). Mayer and Ely are fantastic as the boisterous cantankerous patriarch and the firm and willful matriarch of the dysfunctional Politt family. Slaten’s work with Ely is particularly effective when he rejects her attempts to show emotion. Her doting on her favorite son is genuine and authentic.  

Eric Dean White makes a handsome Gooper. His toe-to-toe exchanges with Big Mama over the family estate showed anxious urgency. His actions were fueled by his meddling wife, Mae. Roxanne Wellington was remarkable as Mae. Her manipulation was cloaked as southern properness. She exploited her children to endear Gooper to his parents while expostulating about Brick and Maggie’s miserable marriage and nonexistent sex life. Wellington’s pinpoint work was both a subtle and overt characterization of a deplorable woman who was easy to despise. Kate Kappel, Tatum Wilson, and Cooper Scheessele did strong work as the annoying “no-neck” children. 

Teresa Doggett’s costume designs created alluring looks of wealth and propriety. Maggie’s dresses, and the iconic slip, were beautifully form fitting and enhanced McKirnan’s portrayal of the sexually charged Maggie. Mae’s burnt orange two-piece maternity outfit looked expensive, stuffy and suitably prim, adding to her matronly characterization. Doggett’s seersucker shorts and rompers for the children added to the southern charm and seemed becoming for the children of a well-off southern family. 

The men’s tailored linen suits created handsome warm weather semi-formal attire for Big Daddy and Gooper. The pant legs were excessively long and needed to be shortened, especially for suits on rich, well-to-do men. Finally, Brick’s gray silk pajamas clung to his sculpted shoulders, biceps, and chest creating the striking look of a broad shouldered, muscular and athletic. Doggett’s designs complimented Wolk’s set design in color and texture. She created a look of sophisticated stateliness for the entire cast.  

The festival creates an exceptional opportunity for St. Louisans to rediscover or uncover the works of Tennessee Williams. The playwright called St. Louis home for longer than anywhere else. This stylish production is well directed, superbly acted, and highly recommended. 

The Tennessee Williams Festival celebrates the art and influence of the writer with the mainstage production of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, a cabaret production entitled “Life Upon the Wicked Stage,” Scholar panel discussions, a walking tour, and an open mic event. Tickets for CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF and the other festival events can be purchased by clicking the link below.  

PHOTO CREDIT: Suzy Gorman

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