Maggie the Cat...is alive!
Mar. 14th, 2008 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeMichael and I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last night. For the most part I thought it was pretty good, although not transcendently good (so no standing O from me). Anika Noni Rose did a great job as Maggie--not really the way I would've played it (I thought she missed a lot of the musicality of the role) but she did interesting things with it. Terence Howard was good in the intense scenes--his monologue about Skipper was quite good--but he was a little too subdued in the other stuff. He just looked drunk, not motivatedly drunk (IOW, I didn't see why he was drunk, I didn't see the torment within, even a hint). Was quite impressed with Phylicia Rashad, who I thought was wrong for Big Mama. She didn't seem the type but she came through--amazingly vulnerability from her. Great face, it registered a lot. I'm sorry to say, I was disappointed in James Earl Jones. I thought he missed a LOT in his monologues--seemed to rush through them instead of experiencing them, and I found it difficult to understand him sometimes. His cry in the third act, when Gooper says "sounds like the pain has hit" should be like a dying animal, a bellow, much bigger and more primal than it was. And when he realizes the truth at the end of Act II he should be MUCH more affected than JEJ played it--he has been betrayed, they're all "LIARS!" It seemed very casual.
Giancarlo Esposito as Brother Man was great, as was his Sister Woman. Their kids were cute and appropriately annoying except for the one who has the scene with Maggie--horrible, annoying child actor who played her scene like Dee from "what's Happening!!," ridiculously sarcastic and snotty. She also lounged on the couch during the curtain call--her father is Terence Howard so I doubt she's going to get called on it.
The set, transparent scrims for the walls, was neat except for the badly painted moon and the lame-o fireworks. And I liked the much-criticized "spotlight on monologues" thing that Allen had going, except for one fade-in that happened too quickly. However they didn't use the Elia Kazan ending (the one where Brick makes it clear to Gooper and Mae that he's backing Maggie's story)--they used the earlier one that Tennessee Williams wrote, that ends with Maggie turning out the lights and saying "you weak, beautiful people who give up! What you need is someone to take hold of you, gently, with love!...I do love you, Brick, I do!" Brick: "Wouldn't it be funny if that were true?" The writing of that last exchange is lovely of course, but I prefer the other ending, where Mae is screeching at Maggie, saying "we know you're not pregnant, we hear the nightly pleading and the nightly refusal." And Brick says "Sister Woman, how do you know we don't come to some kind of temporary arrangement?...Oh, I know some people are huffers and puffers, but others are silent lovers." Mae says in amazement "I cannot believe you are stooping to her level, I simply cannot believe you are stooping to her level." And Bricks says to Maggie "What is your level? Tell me so I can sink or rise to it." That's beautiful writing too, and it shows Brick has had a transformation--something has happened, something has changed. The other ending is awfully defeatist.
The audience was interesting--they laughed at everything. It was very unsettling--yes, Cat is nominally a comedy but it's really more of a Chekovian comedy, not a yukfest. It seemed as though the actors started playing to get laughs as well (at least some of them--JEJ and Terence Howard, certainly) which definitely undercut some of the power of these moments. For example, TH delivered the Skipper monologue, JEJ's next line was something like "are you done?" and he said it very quickly, as though it were a comic line. Of course it got a huge laugh, which completely undermined the power of TH's monologue.
I wish they'd tinted Terence Howard's hair a little redder (like Malcolm X's)--Brick got his nickname from his hair and they cut that reference in the script so the name made no sense.
The four (white) people who sat behind us were apparently annoyed that "the whole play is in Ebonics" (according to Michael). This amused and infuriated me by turns--no, it wasn't in "Ebonics," the entire script was pretty faithful to Tennessee Williams and nothing was rewritten, as far as I can tell (and I know that play very well). If you're referring to the "blaccent," well, the whole cast is black, what did you expect? They sounded great. Morons. The four of them left after the second act.
Giancarlo Esposito as Brother Man was great, as was his Sister Woman. Their kids were cute and appropriately annoying except for the one who has the scene with Maggie--horrible, annoying child actor who played her scene like Dee from "what's Happening!!," ridiculously sarcastic and snotty. She also lounged on the couch during the curtain call--her father is Terence Howard so I doubt she's going to get called on it.
The set, transparent scrims for the walls, was neat except for the badly painted moon and the lame-o fireworks. And I liked the much-criticized "spotlight on monologues" thing that Allen had going, except for one fade-in that happened too quickly. However they didn't use the Elia Kazan ending (the one where Brick makes it clear to Gooper and Mae that he's backing Maggie's story)--they used the earlier one that Tennessee Williams wrote, that ends with Maggie turning out the lights and saying "you weak, beautiful people who give up! What you need is someone to take hold of you, gently, with love!...I do love you, Brick, I do!" Brick: "Wouldn't it be funny if that were true?" The writing of that last exchange is lovely of course, but I prefer the other ending, where Mae is screeching at Maggie, saying "we know you're not pregnant, we hear the nightly pleading and the nightly refusal." And Brick says "Sister Woman, how do you know we don't come to some kind of temporary arrangement?...Oh, I know some people are huffers and puffers, but others are silent lovers." Mae says in amazement "I cannot believe you are stooping to her level, I simply cannot believe you are stooping to her level." And Bricks says to Maggie "What is your level? Tell me so I can sink or rise to it." That's beautiful writing too, and it shows Brick has had a transformation--something has happened, something has changed. The other ending is awfully defeatist.
The audience was interesting--they laughed at everything. It was very unsettling--yes, Cat is nominally a comedy but it's really more of a Chekovian comedy, not a yukfest. It seemed as though the actors started playing to get laughs as well (at least some of them--JEJ and Terence Howard, certainly) which definitely undercut some of the power of these moments. For example, TH delivered the Skipper monologue, JEJ's next line was something like "are you done?" and he said it very quickly, as though it were a comic line. Of course it got a huge laugh, which completely undermined the power of TH's monologue.
I wish they'd tinted Terence Howard's hair a little redder (like Malcolm X's)--Brick got his nickname from his hair and they cut that reference in the script so the name made no sense.
The four (white) people who sat behind us were apparently annoyed that "the whole play is in Ebonics" (according to Michael). This amused and infuriated me by turns--no, it wasn't in "Ebonics," the entire script was pretty faithful to Tennessee Williams and nothing was rewritten, as far as I can tell (and I know that play very well). If you're referring to the "blaccent," well, the whole cast is black, what did you expect? They sounded great. Morons. The four of them left after the second act.
