What's the Victory of a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Saturday night, I went off to London's West End to see a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. After missing the West End's production of A Streetcar Named Desire earlier this term, I was very excited to finally get my Southern Lit fix in England. This production of Cat did very well on Broadway, so naturally, it made it's way over to London. The cast included James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama, Sanaa Lathan as Maggie, and Adrian Lester as Brick. I thought this was a brilliant move on the director's part. Williams' play centers around a crumbling Southern plantation, which means that historically the cast has been all white, except for the roles of the servants. The director, Debbie Allen, immediately breaks that tradition and opens up Williams' play to another layer of creative opportunity which is not limited by race. I love that concept! For more about the play, the cast, and the director, visit http://www.catwestend.com/

So, with the big stars, the possibility for a deconstruction of racial boundaries, the "Hey, I'm going to the West End" factor, I was really excited to see this show. I was a little disappointed at first. Sanaa Lathan, in her portrayal of Maggie, did not move me at all, which is strange because Maggie is one of my favorite Williams' characters. She has some great lines, but Lathan's "Southern accent" just distracted me from them. Maggie just faded into the background next to the powerful portrayals of Brick and Big Daddy. In fact, Adrian Lester as Brick was phenomenal. He made the show for me, especially when interacting with James Earl Jones. Those scenes where amazing! Brick's "charm of the defeated" (as Maggie calls it) really came through, and I was drawn into Lester's performance. Great job!

Most of the audience, however, did not quite get Lester's performance or Williams' writings as a whole. One of the conflicts in Cat revolves around Brick's excessive drinking as he tries to remove himself from other issues of death and sexuality. Whenever another character called Brick an alcoholic or when Brick went for another drink, the audience laughed and chuckled. Um, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is not a comedy. The other American students I went with found the laughter very disturbing as well, and I'm still not sure why the audience laughed away Brick's drinking. As far as I can tell, the social construction of alcoholism as a vice is lost on a British audience. Coming from an American background, especially Southern, alcohol is kind of a touchy subject; there were Constitutional Amendments about it after all. The British audience, however, didn't come to the show with the same cultural background, and thus, laughed off any drama over alcoholism. It was shocking. I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing the British culture, but since drinking is so common place and an integral part of social life, the term "alcoholic" does not carry the same cultural connotation. There's a discussion we could have here about perceptions of alcohol in the States and in the UK, but that would be another blog's worth. But maybe we should get into it. British students have said to me many times, "What do you feel about the drinking age back home? It's ridiculous. Kids never learn how to handle their alcohol. I think there's more binge drinking in the States because of the higher drinking age." But they say this to me while they are quite intoxicated themselves. Hi, yeah, Pot, meet Kettle. But in all fairness, they are partially right; when some American students enter college, they drink heavily. So, I'm not sure what to make of this cross-cultural disconnect. Regardless, visiting students doing this program should be aware of the cultural differences surrounding alcohol; I know two of the girls with me this year experienced culture shock because they were unaware. So, while the issues of race and sex kind of faded into the background, Allen's production of Cat certainly raised an interesting issue of alcoholism across the ocean. Sorry for maybe getting preachy and taboo! Please stay tuned for upcoming posts concerning...(the ellipses is for suspense) my pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral followed by a review of the West End's production of An Inspector Calls!