Passion Play

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Originally uploaded by catonahot...

There was a stretch during the second act of tonight's performance of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in which James Earl Jones nearly completely cracked up Terrence Howard. Jones's Big Daddy was explaining, through words and various gesticulations, his continued sexual virility and appetite on this, his 65th birthday, to Howard's Brick, his son. Something in Jones's emoting broke through Howard's resolve and his face cracked, against its will, and broke into smiles and swallowed giggles. Jones, encouraged, pushed harder and might have, under other circumstances, succeeded in breaking Howard completely. Howard was saved only by his character's relative lack of dialog.

The audience loved it. I loved it. It was part of the show, the experience implicitly promised by a marquee filled with big names. But the show can overshadow the performance and, tonight, it did. The middle of the second act turned abruptly from drama to unintentional comedy. How do you rescue it? It's almost impossible. Howard was able to recover in time to finish the act strong but that stretch of laughter undermined what was supposed to be a more serious confrontation between father and son.

Anika Noni Rose is an amazing Maggie the Cat. She's sultry and seductive and a force of nature. James Earl Jones was good as the patriarch of the clan but he felt too jovial, too jolly. His barbs didn't read as meanly as I think they were meant to. You can't help thinking him a nice old man, even though you're not supposed to. Phylicia Rashad played Big Momma well. If there is a problem with the casting, it's Terence Howard as Brick.

Brick is like the singularity at the center of a black hole: everyone is drawn to him, pulled into his gravity like planets spinning in orbit. To be effective, he has to have a presence, an attractive power that can convey some inkling into why all these characters are striving for his love, affection, and well-being while he essentially does nothing. Howard just doesn't have this presence. We want him to- after all he's a rising star in Hollywood. Because of that, we're drawn to him, we want him to fill up the stage even though he's on the periphery. Unfortunately, at least on this night, he couldn't.

The result is that the other actors, particularly Jones and Rashad, have to overcompensate to make up for this void that can't be filled. It also undermines Maggie's passion and devotion: it's hard to see even a shadow of what she sees, or once saw, in this man.

Despite these flaws, I enjoyed the play. Seeing James Earl Jones on stage easily made it a winning proposition for me. While he may have made Big Daddy too sympathetic, he was still a force on stage and everything I had imagined him to be. So the acting choices and execution may have been a bit off, so the action may have been blunted by some unlooked for comic relief, they put on one hell of a show.