Tennessee Williams’ classic thrills and chills
almeida theatre
Hopes must have been high at the Almeida when they announced Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Director Rebecca Frecknall has had spectacular success with her previous productions of Tennessee Williams. Daisy Edgar-Jones, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lennie James play, respectively, a sexually frustrated wife, an alcoholic, possibly gay husband, and a bullying, dying family patriarch. As the Time Out review said, ‘the horror here is the hell of other people. Everyone is trapped with everyone else’.
Unfortunately for The Almeida, a number of critics felt trapped by this long production, although most gave favourable reviews. Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lennie James received high praise but the reviewers didn’t agree about Daisy Edgar-Jones with comments ranging from ‘so good’ to ‘irritating’.
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In fact, it was Time Out’s Andrjez Lukowski (5★) who loved it most of all. Daisy Edgar-Jones, he proclaimed, ‘is so, so good, inhabiting Maggie with a burning, vivacious swagger, alternatively self-mocking, self-pitying, compassionate and vicious’. Kingsley Ben-Adir displays, he said, ‘terrific acting, but sacrificing showing off to the greater good of the play.’.
The Standard’s Nick Curtis (4★) too praised the cast in this ‘striking and vivid interpretation’. He said Daisy Edgar-Jones ‘gives an intense and physically exact performance as a woman born poor and aware of the currency of her body and its fecundity. There’s intention in every tilt of her shoulders or arch or her bare instep.’ He talked of ‘Kingsley Ben-Adir, bringing nuance to stumbles and slurs’ and ‘Lennie James, terrifying…he’s magnetic.’
‘Performances are strong all round,’ agreed Holly O’Mahony for LondonTheatre (4★). The Financial Times’ Sarah Hemming (4★) spoke of ‘Rebecca Frecknall’s bruising, claustrophobic production, in which bad faith seems to hang in the air like mist, pooling in the corners of Chloe Lamford’s coldly opulent set.’ ‘What a savage, poisonous, ugly work this semi-autobiographical piece proves anew in Frecknall’s unflinching, if overlong revival,’ observed Clare Allfree in the Telegraph (4★).
Siobhan Murphy for The Stage (3★) declared: ‘if baroque, red-in-tooth-and-claw intensity is what you seek from a Williams play, you won’t feel short-changed.’ Arifa Akbar in The Guardian (3★) decided, ‘Ultimately this is a production that you admire rather than one that moves you.’ Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (3★) had a similar reaction: ‘illuminating, but strangely passive’.
The Independent’s Alice Saville (2★) didn’t like it: ‘Frecknall’s play runs long and slow at 180 minutes – and it feels unbalanced, too, with Maggie’s thin scenes outweighed by her husband’s bloated ones.’
Adam Bloodworth for CityAM (2★) found ‘this version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof only skims the surface, rarely getting into the darkness at the heart of Williams’ play about trauma, ageing and identity.’ For him, ‘Daisy Edgar-Jones is irritating, never defusing from a perpetual state of angry-shouty indoor voice.’ The Times’ Clive Davis (2★) was another left cold by the Hot Roof: ‘this weirdly off-kilter production, alternately ponderous and manically overheated, could almost be a parody of Williams’s gothic manner.’
Critics’ average rating 3.3★
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof can be seen at The Almeida Theatre until 1 February 2025. Buy tickets direct from The Almeida Theatre
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