Foetid, fraught and enervating, a performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof can suck the life out of you; so intense are the fractured characters and relentless, scorched-earth passions. Evidence of empathy or pity are thin on the ground; noble sentiment displaced by fear and loathing embodied. No shirk at ratcheting- up hysteria, this Broadway transfer of Tennessee Williams' controversial work left me shell-shocked. Magnetic, dignified rage is exchanged between the two accomplished leads - Adrian Lester and Sanaa Lathan - but they can be undermined by a supporting cast prone to shouting and slapstick.
      My chief reservation concerns the play's time-frame. Director Debbie Allen's transports Cat on a Hot Tin Roof from the 1950s to the 1980s - seemingly without telling the set or costume designers. Both assay the unspecified brief, but the result is a visually amorphic hybrid. Morgan Large imagines a vaulting, bay- windowed stage, pleasingly redolent of plantation mansions, but then loses continuity with furnishings. Wooden revivalist sofas, and a kitsch, Biedermeier- style bar, are some of the warring elements that jar in Allen's update. Similarly, Fay Fullerton's nostalgic clothes (pretty prom dresses and suave, three-piece suits) can't quite cut it in a modernised context. Cavils aside, this is not the root of the problem: disturbingly, this Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is dissipated by history's diminution of its central controversies. In the homosexual playwright's day, the proclivities he infers in the text were illegal, and our own Lord Chamberlain banned production. Furthermore, the delicate topic of cancer remained secretive, and alcoholism was still a misunderstood taboo. Allen's decision emasculates the original, excising its frisson - time dilutes shock and shibboleth.
      The handsome Lester's self-destructive, anti-hero Brick is a slow-boiling cauldron of angry anguish. In the craven bosom of this venal family, he festers in a self-medicated vacuum (indifferent to his beautiful wife Maggie) a shadow of the athletic star he once was. As feisty, wanton Maggie, the articulate Lathan is unexpectedly sympathetic. Trailer-trash or not, she summons reserves of integrity that put to shame her co-stars' clan. Dying autocrat, Big Daddy (James Earl Jones) looks the part, but along with Big Mama (Phylicia Rashad) needs a hand with his diction. Rather than annunciate more clearly, they bellow their interminable slanging matches, incomprehensively screamed at cowering relatives.
      Despite trials to the ear and eye, this all-black cast make for pretty addictive entertainment, especially in the third act where an almighty tangle of obfuscation, half-truth and lies unravel between the belligerent sweethearts. Ironically, it allows them a future at the still-heart of the Plantation estate - even a family of their own. Thank the Lord, since those they leave behind malinger, rotten to the core - the fruits of 'mendacity' their just desert and inheritance.
Caroline Kellett Fraysse