Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

The legendary American actor James Earl Jones is 80 next January.  There are few sights more impressive on the London stage than his commanding performance as Big Daddy in one of Tennessee Williams' greatest plays, and the production at the Novello theatre ticks over like a Lincoln Continental. Big play, big theatre, big cast -- three hours of terrific acting and sheer enjoyment.  I was seeing the play for the first time, so I can't comment on the difference an all-black cast makes to the meaning of the play;  I suspect no difference at all.  Jones and Phylicia Rashad, who plays Big Mama, are the only two members of the original Broadway cast from 2008.  They are joined by the stunning Sanaa Lathan as the beautiful daughter-in-law Maggie, still in love with her alcoholic husband Brick.  Lathan carries the first act brilliantly as Brick (Adrian Lester) pours himself drink after drink and finally puts a pillow over his head to avoid listening to his wife's despairing monologue.  By the end of the play Brick has downed about three bottles of Scotch but is still just about standing.  Lester gives a wonderfully understated performance as Brick, going easy on the slurred vowels and alcoholic staggers and concentrating on the hidden demons that make him drink. Crippled by a plaster cast because he has broken his ankle in a stupid prank the night before, Brick is in perpetual motion, hopping around the stage and turning his back on his wife, mother and father.  The bedroom he shares with his neglected wife is on two levels, forcing him to hobble up and down steps between the bed and the bar with his crutch.  He says he drinks out of disgust at the 'mendacity' surrounding him but it's clear he is in denial about his own ambiguous sexuality.  The great thing about Williams' writing in this play is the way he effortlessly switches his characters into emotional overdrive, then uses the banal minor characters to interrupt them and achieve a change of tone.  The play takes place in real time over three acts on a single evening and in a single room, achieving a classical unity.  There are excellent performances too from Nina Sosanya and Peter de Jersey as the other son and daughter-in-law.  It's an old-fashioned production by director Debbie Allen, who is content to trust the text and let the actors get on with it rather than adding bells and whistles of her own. The result is a thumping success, though nobody is going to go around a decade from now asking 'Did you see Debbie Allen's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof?'  They'll be asking 'Did you see James Earl Jones and Adrian Lester?'  I think there's a lesson here somewhere for directors who are often too keen to put their own personal stamp on their shows.  No names, no pack-drill.