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Theatre Review Bedroom to swing a cat

PAUL FOLEY observes how a classic play and some great performances can outstrip the director's intentions

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester

 

IN the programme notes for the Royal Exchange’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, director Roy Alexander Weise said he had seen previous productions of the play, as well as the Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman film, but wasn’t really taken with any of them.

For him, theatre should be about entering a dream world, away from the reality of the “shitty” real world. With that in mind, he wanted his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to have a contemporary feel, very much part of the here and now. 

That is all fine. 

A classic play like this is strong enough to be reinterpreted for the 21st century or any other period. At its core the play is a family drama. Its themes of greed, fear, death, mendacity and homophobia are fairly universal. 

However, to reimagine the play for today requires more than setting the entire play in Brick and Maggie’s bedroom and replacing the ceiling fan with an Alexander Calder-type mobile. 

Apart from these changes this is a fairly conventional staging of the play and there is nothing wrong with that. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a classic and even after 70-odd years it stands up well. 

This is a fine production with some great performances. In particular Jacqui Dubois as Big Mama is a wonderfully interfering woman whose alarm grows as her beloved family begins to implode. Ntombizodwa Ndlovu is excellent as Maggie, all scheming and brashness, yet with a vulnerability hewn from a childhood of poverty. 

At the heart of the play is Big Daddy’s son Brick, a drunk with a broken leg who drinks excessively to forget and to shut out his squabbling family. Bayo Gbadamosi gives us a Brick that is laconic and understated, verging on the disinterested, but the rage eating him up is palpable.

The BBC’s re-working of Great Expectations has created an unnecessary fuss about the rights and wrongs of dabbling with sacred texts. If you are going to re-interpret a classic for a modern audience then be bold, strip back the original to its core themes and rebuild from there.

Otherwise setting the play conventionally is just fine.

Runs until April 29 2023, box office: 0161 833 9833, royalexchange.co.uk 

 

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