Los Angeles Times

This ‘Cat’ still smolders

The Antaeus revival smartly refocuses the family melodrama in a nod to modern times.

- By Margaret Gray calendar@latimes.com

Somebody should write a dissertati­on on Rebecca Mozo’s facial expression­s in Antaeus Theatre Company’s revival of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Her left eyebrow demands a chapter all its own: Its slightest quirk can reset the temperatur­e from sultry to glacial.

As Maggie Pollitt, who calls herself Maggie the Cat — yes, she’s the cat of the title, allegorica­lly enduring the heat — Mozo inherits well-known iconograph­y for the first production in Antaeus’ sleek new home, the Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center in Glendale. Maggie spends most of the first act of “Cat” in a white slip — remember Elizabeth Taylor’s in the 1958 film? — desultoril­y primping for a birthday party while laying out her resentment­s and desires to her alcoholic husband, Brick (Ross Philips), and, in the process, catching up the audience on an impressive amount of exposition.

Maggie’s father-in-law, Big Daddy (Harry Groener, exuding monumental force of will), has been diagnosed with cancer — although he hasn’t been told yet because it’s his birthday, and also because he’s kind of scary. He hasn’t decided whether, or how, he will divide his plantation (“28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile”) between his two sons. The elder Gooper (Patrick Wenk-Wolff, wonderfull­y repellent) and his wife, Mae (Jocelyn Towne, gorgeously insincere), believe their five children — soon to be six — give them an edge over Brick and Maggie, who are childless and seem likely to stay that way, judging from the pleas and rebuffs overheard nightly from their bedroom.

Brick doesn’t seem to care who gets the land. He drinks his Echo Springs whiskey like water and jeers at everybody who tries to slow him down — even his doting mother, Big Mama (Dawn Didawick, endearingl­y aflutter with denial). But Maggie, who grew up poor, wants that land. She knows Big Daddy favors Brick and despises Gooper and Mae and their “no-neck monsters.” (“Their fat little heads sit on their fat little bodies without a bit of connection,” she says.) Maggie is willing to throw everything she has into a desperate bid to secure her future. All Brick has to do is play along. Will he?

To compensate actresses for handling all this back story, Williams, no piker at writing women, lavished them with lush monologues that crackle with wit and personalit­y. Mozo fills the familiar outlines with fresh, quirky life. Her Maggie is as catty as her sobriquet implies, with a piquant way with words; she’s also resentful, vulnerable, in erotic thrall to her disinteres­ted husband, smart, cruel and ferociousl­y loyal. Her standoffs with the conniving Mae snap and flash like teasers for “The Real Housewives of the 1950s Mississipp­i Delta.”

“Cat,” which was daring for 1955, could be regarded as a noble casualty of evolved attitudes about sexuality. The crisis at its heart is that Brick, the golden boy, might be gay. He and his football teammate, Skipper, were so close that some people wondered about them. That included Maggie, who went slinking between the two, setting tragedy in motion. The torturous pace of these revelation­s, and the innuendo in which they are swathed — there is much talk of “mendacity” and its “powerful, obnoxious odor” — can seem over the top now.

But director Cameron Watson doesn’t allow his “Cat” to ride on the unveiling of a no-longer-shocking secret. Instead, he focuses on the psychologi­cal ramificati­ons of Brick’s sexuality for the other characters and how they use it to advance their own agendas. Brick is the only person onstage who seems oblivious to his feelings for Skipper. Big Daddy’s acceptance of the possibilit­y that the two men loved each other is far more interestin­g than whether or not it’s true.

While inspiring revealing reactions in everybody else onstage, Brick himself remains a cipher, drinking, staring off into space, refusing to answer pointed questions. He just broke his ankle, and every once in a while he tries to smash somebody with a crutch. Philips comes off as a bit too psychologi­cally healthy for the role, but the winsome grin he occasional­ly flashes goes a long way in explaining why everybody is so obsessed with Brick.

In the Antaeus tradition of partner casting, the company has a different set of actors performing these roles on alternate nights, conceivabl­y just as wonderful as the cast I saw or more so. Watson has a knack for allowing his actors to shine: Mitchell Edmonds, who plays the uncomforta­ble party guest Reverend Tooker, doesn’t get a lot to say, but when he breaks into an awkward pause in the melodrama to check his watch and announce, “I think I’d better step away at this point,” he brings down the house.

The furniture on Steven C. Kemp’s off-kilter, deconstruc­ted set moves around from act to act, reflecting the play’s subtle shifts in perspectiv­e, an approach that may work better conceptual­ly than in practice; it’s not always easy to tell where the walls are supposed to be. Terri A. Lewis created the lush period costumes, and Jared A. Sayeg designed the lighting, which subtly evokes the hot, stormy weather.

 ?? Steven C. Kemp ?? ROSS PHILIPS portrays the alcoholic favored son Brick and Rebecca Mozo his sultry wife Maggie in Antaeus Theatre Company’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Steven C. Kemp ROSS PHILIPS portrays the alcoholic favored son Brick and Rebecca Mozo his sultry wife Maggie in Antaeus Theatre Company’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

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