‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ’ set to heat up San Jose Stage
“Living with someone you love can be lonelier — than living entirely alone! — if the one that y’love doesn’t love you.”
That could be the thesis of much of the American dramatic canon, but it’s perhaps never been more persuasive than in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize winner from 1955, now in a San Jose Stage Company production.
The script is a cascade of devastations: “I’m not living with you. We occupy the same cage,” says Maggie (Allison F. Rich) to the husband, Brick (Rob August), who won’t have sex with her any more, after she committed what he believes an unforgivable sin: “How in hell on earth do you imagine that you’re going to have a child by a man that can’t stand you?”
Progeny and inheritance and love and lust all come to a head as patriarch Big Daddy (Randall King) reckons with a terminal diagnosis and must decide the fate of his prosperous plantation. The play’s women cling to men who don’t hold back: “In all these years you never believed that I loved you?” says Big Mama ( Judith Miller). The play’s men feel most strongly about other men in their lives — feelings that can’t or won’t be returned.
Lee Sankowich directs.