Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Novello Theatre | reviews, news & interviews
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Novello Theatre
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Novello Theatre
James Earl Jones makes a career-best Big Daddy
![](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/mast_image_landscape/public/mastimages/ab9083c4344a26f28a8b1378ce88e8e8.jpg?itok=UCcUixN-)
The voice has landed, and what an astonishing sound it makes.
Allen's New York account of this same play did knockout business but got sniffy reviews a season or two ago, where discussion at the time centered around the supposed distaste of film star Terrence Howard, making his stage debut as Brick, for the rigours of a Broadway run. In London, Howard and his Broadway leading lady, Anika Noni Rose, have given way to Adrian Lester and Sanaa Lathan, both of whom acquit themselves more than creditably as the alcoholic, "click"-happy Brick and his curvaceous, child-hungry wife, the febrile Maggie: Williams's eponymous "cat".
But deftly though she powers through the opening act - in essence, an extended monologue punctuated by interruptions - Lathan is in essence priming us for the main course that arrives after the interval. That comes with first the unmistakable sound, and then sight, of the physically capacious James as the cancer-ridden patriarch who won't go gently into the good night. Exulting in a reported reprieve from "death's country" that Big Daddy will later discover is a lie, the actor sends the production hurtling into life and toward a third act from which he then, alas, is mostly absent, at which point Phylicia Rashad's tremulous Big Mama brings the evening home.
I've always thought Williams's most outsized male character was one of those supporting roles whereby you can't go wrong, rather like Mercutio, say, or Ibsen's Judge Brack (a part I once saw Jones do). But even by comparison to such previous, and formidable, Big Daddys of my experience as Eric Porter, Charles Durning, and the role's last London and Broadway occupant, Ned Beatty, Jones is a breed apart. Here are pride and contempt, anxiety and tenderness, robust comedy and roiling anger folded into an overwhelming whole, a onetime fieldhand who has ascended the social scale and then some while remaining impotent against the imminent mortality that lies in wait.
The much-vaunted fact of an all-black cast - or perhaps not: one of the pre-pubescent gaggle of calamitous "no-neck monsters" is very light-skinned - turns out to be of less significance than a renewed awareness of the universality of a playwright who with Cat hit any number of home truths hard. The updating of the action to the 1980s makes one wonder whether the inexplicable "little fever" that felled the former athlete Brick's beloved Skipper might be an early form of AIDS; at the same time, such specifics open on to a view of thwarted communication that may be the only thing, ironically, that binds this family together. Jones at the start is magnificently funny, his face locked into an epic scowl as he attempts to clear an overcrowded room so that Big Daddy and Brick can at last have their talk. (The porous quality of Morgan Large's cage-like set makes plain the lack of privacy that helps drive the plot.) Not long after, though, Jones has passed through scorn and disgust to something infinitely moving, Big Daddy cradling Brick like a father and son fearful of two very different reckonings.
Rashad, a Broadway Tony winner for the same Raisin in the Sun in which Lathan co-starred, got some cool New York notices for Cat, in which case the actress has clearly upped the stakes in the move across the Atlantic. As if to remind us how democratically structured is this play, her Big Mama turns the third act into the awakening of a woman who must confront both the hatred of her husband of 40 years and the extent to which her "precious baby", Brick, has surrendered himself to booze. Dabbing at her eyes, Rashad gives us a mother in near-meltdown, her cheery prattle a heartbeat away from tears.
The British contingent begins with Lester's unusually sinewy, crutch-wielding Brick - flawlessly accented, for those who are wondering - and extends to a pair of remarkably vivid turns from Nina Sosanya and Peter de Jersey as the couple whose ceaseless breeding exists in painful contrast to the barren Maggie. And so Williams's play ends where it began, with Maggie in heat, oblivious (or not) to the chill settling in around her. Her "cat", to be sure, commands attention, but when this Big Daddy lets rip, the entire animal kingdom - not to mention the lucky audience at the Novello - had best watch out.
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more Theatre
![The cast of The Silver Cord - anyone for a game of Happy Families?](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Silver-Cord-September-03-2024-1-1.jpg?itok=Ya8G1iKM)
![Chris Harper, Seann Walsh and Aden Gillett in Art - Mexican standoff](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Chris%20Harper%2C%20Seann%20Walsh%2C%20Aden%20Gillett%20in%20ART%20%28photo%20Geraint%20Lewis%29_7596.jpg?itok=Gb_sgd-7)
![Love me do. James McArdle and Bel Powley in 'The Real Thing'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Real-Thing-2.jpg?itok=DtM9m9p5)
![Brothers in alarms: Ebenezer Gyau, Kadiesha Belgrave, Selorm Adonu in ‘G’](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/G1.jpg?itok=WxyGS4is)
![Phenomenal vocals: Mary Bridget Davies as Janis Jopin](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Mary%20Bridget%20Davies%20as%20Janis%20Joplin%20in%20A%20NIGHT%20WITH%20JANIS%20JOPLIN%2C%20credit%20Danny%20Kaan%201.jpg?itok=SAe3HcYn)
![Desperate, farcical, infuriating, ultimately patience-testing: (l-r) Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas in L'Addition](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/L%27addition%20small.jpg?itok=0I_fgLCR)
![Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong in Shifters - musical chairs ends in no score draw](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/6%29%20Tosin%20Cole%20%28Dre%29%20Heather%20Agyepong%20%28Des%29%20%28c%29%20Marc%20Brenner%20.jpg?itok=SayQSagA)
![Trunk route: Tom Byrne as Richard Hannay being chased across the misty moors](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%2039%20Steps%20-%20%20Tom%20Byrne%2C%20%C2%A9Mark%20Senior.jpg?itok=XCKIG66o)
![A furious dissection of Jewish mores: (l-r) Dylan Corbett-Bader and Gemma Barnett in REVENGE: After the Levoyah](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Revenge%20After%20the%20Levoyah%20small.jpg?itok=FaMZBRhb)
![Blistering solo performance: Robbie Gordon in Wonder Fools' 'Òran'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Oran%20small.jpg?itok=4Y5OWyCB)
![Réka Jónás, Lily de la Haye and Stuart Pendred in The Fabulist - cardinal sinning](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/3B9A2322-Edit.jpg?itok=uDXzVpKZ)
![Diva, harridan and force of nature: writer and performer Arturo Luíz Soria plays his own mother in 'Ni Mi Madre'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Ni%20mi%20madre%20small.jpg?itok=i_hrsMH1)
Add comment