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The recent Indiana University Theater production of
Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
did not disappoint, as I feared it would. I was concerned that it might pale
against the memory of a London production some ten years ago that starred
Brendan Frazer and Ned Beatty in the roles of Brick and Big Daddy. It did not.
It was well acted and admirably staged.
What struck me instead was how commonplace and less fraught
the two central dramatic themes—cancer and homosexuality—have become since the
play was first performed in 1955. Mendacity
is the catchword. Everyone is lying. Big Daddy has been lied to about his
aggressive cancer, which will soon kill him. Brick is lying about his
relationship with Skipper, a “pure” friendship that nowadays can only be seen
as latently, if not overtly, gay. But Brick’s lie is as much for himself as for
the family, and his own mendacity drives him to drink.
Tennessee Williams (1911-1963) achieved recognition as a
playwright after years of toiling in obscurity. His star finally rose with the
1944 play, The Glass Menagerie. He
was at his best in the 1940s and 1950s. Williams’ genre is Southern tragedy.
His plots tend to be Shakespearean in character. In Cat the king is dying. Big Daddy’s plantation empire is at stake.
Rival brothers and their rapacious wives have gathered for the end that
everyone except the king knows is coming. Big Daddy has been kept in the dark
by the family’s treacherous secrecy and his own self-delusion. Big Daddy is
lying to himself as much as Brick is lying to himself about their respective
conditions.
But the conditions have lost the punch they had half a
century ago. Cancer, while potentially devastating, is no longer spoken of in
whispers. In Cat it is regarded as an
automatic death sentence, which it usually was in the 1950s. Similarly, Brick’s
homosexuality, whether he ever acted on it or not, is a dirty secret, one that
has driven him into alcoholism—and drove his “friend” Skipper to suicide. Of
course, homophobia and guilt still drive people to suicide today; the
cyberbullying and gay teen suicide statistics are appalling. But being gay—or having
homosexual thoughts—are no longer discussed only in whispers. More than a dozen
U.S. states and several counties allow gay marriage. The world has changed.
Mendacity regarding cancer and homosexuality is no longer the norm, no longer
the stuff of great drama.
Williams’ Cat is
well crafted, a classic perhaps, but no longer contemporary. The larger issues
of the dying king and the lies people tell to delude themselves and others are
as timeless as they are in Shakespeare. But the twin vehicles of Williams’
drama—cancer and homosexuality—throw the play into the class of historical
drama. They are horse-and-buggy themes in a hybrid electric era. That said, it
is no less watchable. Cat still
offers an evening of compelling drama.
