Is the term "perfect" presumptuous? Not for Cygnet's production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Every element is exactly right. Sean Murray's casting and direction absolutely nailed Tennessee Williams' bitter, rarely sweet, tale. The designers complement every aspect of the production. Finally, the actors define each of their roles exactingly.
They're the ultimate dysfunctional family: Brick and Maggie, Gooper and Mae, and Big Daddy and Big Mama. Everyone seems egocentric, they care not for the others. Has Big Daddy conquered cancer? Why does nobody seem to like Gooper and Mae? Will Gooper and Mae stop at six brats? Will Brick ever make love to Maggie? From Maggie's (Jessica John) opening tirade to Brick's (Francis Gercke) last line, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a cauldron constantly boiling over.
Jessica John is so convincing that you can feel Maggie's pain. John moves from rant to sweet, demure Southern Belle effortlessly. Francis Gercke redefines the term "angry young man," questioning his relationships with everybody including himself. He is relentless as Brick, disabled with leg cast and crutch, flying across the stage, fighting, and falling.
Jim Chovick's Big Daddy is properly repulsive. Chovick commands and controls his space and the stage as the tyrannical patriarch, on his 28,000-acre spread, proud of his limited education and his dirt-poor beginnings. Chovick easily provides us with a character impossible to love and understand. Contrast him with Sandra Ellis-Troy, as Big Mama, a woman trying to hang strong with a trying, embittered husband and a disintegrating family. Ellis-Troy brings out what little compassion exists in the play.
Rounding out the family is attorney son Gooper (Tom S. Stephenson) and his wife, Mae (Melissa Fernandes). Stephenson and Fernandes play the repressed side of the family, with a mission. Paul Bourque is Doc Baugh, the family physician, who has to give Big Daddy the medical test results at his 65th birthday party. Bourque handles his character's unpleasant task very well. Reverend Tooker (Michael Thomas Tower) takes a severe verbal beating from Big Daddy. Tower's reaction say easily as much as Williams' words.
Sean Murray's simple, very southern bedroom, flanked by suggestions of porches and hallways, is dominated by the bed of Brick and Maggie. Eric Lotze's lighting design is perfect. M. Scott Grabau's sound design is rich. The music choices complement, but don't intrude on the action. His preshow effects, as well as those throughout the play, move the plot and the dialogue. At one point a thunder-and-lightning storm builds as the passions inside the mansion become ever more intense.
Michael Dondanville II's costumes truly define both the period and the characters. Bonnie Durben, as usual, dots the set with just the right props. George Ye had the awesome task of choreographing the fight sequences in such a way as to save casted and crutch-carrying Francis Gercke from actually hurting himself. Still. I hope he has padding.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is not an easy play to watch. It runs almost three hours with two intermissions. It relentlessly pounds on relationships that, many times, are totally untenably. Yet, we are voyeurs, unable to tear ourselves away from intently watching these people. It also helps that Director Murray's cast create one of the best theater experiences of this or any season.
