With ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ NLT puts family strife in spotlight

The bonds of family might strain and twist, might languish from neglect or distance, but they never really break. Family is family.

An American classic opens on the Neuse Little Theater this week, Tennessee Williams’ Deep South family drama “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” It’s the second NLT production of a Williams play in the past two years, after last year’s Ava Gardner-connected “Night of the Iguana.”

In “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” the NLT will treat audiences to power struggles, secrets, love and longing. You know, typical family stuff.

“It’s going to let you see into the life of a normal dysfunctional family,” said Natasha Thompson, who plays Maggie.

The play takes place over an afternoon and evening in the Mississippi mansion of a wealthy family in a crisis. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” centers on youngest Pollitt son Brick, played by Sean Douglas, and his wife, Maggie. Grieving from his best friend’s suicide, Brick has crawled inside a bottle while Maggie tries to reconnect with her husband. The two are at the family’s homestead for the birthday of Brick’s father, Big Daddy, played by Darius Rose, but will learn the patriarch has cancer. Conniving and bitter brother Gooper and his wife Mae, played by Mike Rumble and Theresa Rose, attempt to secure the family’s vast estate for themselves.

Director Tony Pender has updated the 1955 play for contemporary audiences, replacing a high-fidelity record player with a flat screen television and removing the cord from the telephone. But the language of Williams and the play’s family dynamics don’t need updating, he said.

“(Williams) has a remarkable talent for creating dialogue and scenes that take the biggest hardships that people go through, the biggest challenges and tests of their own personal strengths, and putting them on the page,” Pender said. “But he balances that with humor, or otherwise it would just be a two-hour tragedy. The characters confront and overcome their own personal issues to bond together in some way and continue through life in whatever way they’re going to, no matter how misshapen that unit may be.”

Thompson said her character Maggie “The Cat” is the quintessential strong Southern woman, focused on what she wants and willing to do anything to get it.

“I’d be scared of her,” Thompson said of running into a character like Maggie on the street. “She knows what she wants, and she knows how to get it. She always lands on her feet with her cat-like reflexes.”

In playing Brick, Douglas is making his debut on the NLT stage. He said the part is a difficult return to personal demons for him. The sound of clinking glass runs throughout the play as Brick pours drink after drink, and Douglas, a recovering alcoholic who is today active-duty Air Force and a motivational speaker, said he wishes he could somehow reach out to his character and offer help.

“I have to go back into that hole,” Douglas said. “But going back there, it’s therapy in a sense. ... I went to places I didn’t think I could go to again. I started becoming friends with Brick and I wanted to root for him; he’s on the other side of the fence where I used to be.”

Douglas, who said he’s had his own personal experiences with suicide, expects those in the audience will bring their own struggles into the show, and he hopes they’ll find some comfort or connection in his performance.

“I feel like I could be helping out my former self,” Douglas said. “Somebody in the crowd is a Brick. You meet people every day and don’t know that they’re struggling.”

While taking place in a Southern mansion, Pender said audiences won’t see a stage that looks exactly like the inside of a house. The walls will be hanging sheets rather than firm barriers. He said that too often the characters in “Cat in a Hot Tin Roof” are seen as broken people, when Pender says they’re really just normal people.

“For an hour and a half, audiences will have the opportunity to sit down in the middle of someone else’s house,” Pender said. “It’s like a glass house, where everybody can see what’s going on. The classic version is done with everyday broken people, but our focus has been just the opposite. These are all normal, everyday people. They each have their own dreams and needs and are working their butts off to get those. ... It’s about does a family crawl out of that hole and still love each other?”

Other cast members are Erica Nashan as Big Mama, Kenny Howell as the Rev. Tooker, Reggie Parker as Dr. Baugh, Eric House as Haywood and a host of children, Camden Ford as Dixie, Serenity Bean as Trixie, Gabbie Hawk as Buster, Tristan Marion as Sonny and Titania Ruffino as Polly.

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 9:16 AM with the headline "With ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ NLT puts family strife in spotlight."