(seen at the performance on 22nd January 2025)
It is always disconcerting to attend a play set (going by the tiles, Chloe Lamford’s design) in a friend’s kitchen c.1978. This sterile box space, only a piano and banqueting suite chairs for augmentation, allows director Rebecca Frecknall to explore a classic work without reference to its original period.
This produces some hallmark Frecknall clarity, but on this occasion also makes a few matters a little more obscure.
The real delight is the second act. Lennie James as Big Daddy and his alcoholic son Brick (Kinglsey Ben-Adir) dominate. James is easily the strongest Big Daddy the monkey has seen. Previously, every portrayal has been of a driven and indulged male head of the family.
James opts for focussed, highly conscious of his origins and a man who sets his own standards and will cling to them not to achieve what he wishes, but because he has a fear of what may happen if he leaves the path. His horrified recollection of a European vacation underlines it.
Frecknall underlines thrillingly the contrast with Brick. Big Daddy’s relationship with Big Mama (Claire Burt) is no stronger than Brick’s with wife Maggie (Daisy Edgar-Jones). Without alcohol, however, Big Daddy’s life is successful. The replaying of two marriages in a “what if” scenario turns fascinating as a play in itself.
Either side of this, acts one and three are less successful. The first act is simply too large for Daisy Edgar-Jones. Accent slipping regularly, she lacks a weighted core to centre herself in the role of Maggie the Cat.
There is no time-wearied depth to her berating of her feckless husband. We do not feel the original roots of their attraction, nor a motive as to why she is trying so hard to revive it.
Frecknall chooses to leave Brick unresponsive to much of Maggie’s diatribe. The result is a one-sided and one-note rant, less than interesting. It is noticeable in the closing minutes of the scene that when we do get a dialogue, it springs into life.
Having realised during act two that the pianist (Seb Carrington) is the spirit of a dead friend, act three is lifted slightly by the air of unconventionality established.
Mae (Pearl Chanda) and Gooper (Ukwell Roach) come into their own as schemers “on the make.” Burt is allowed emotion and we realise that her controlling manner is something of an illusion.
Both Doctor Baugh (Derek Hagen) and Reverend Tooker (Guy Burgess) prove ornamental, buffeted by the waves of disfunction in the plantation family home.
And that sums up this production. Stripping out the historical element does permit the text to breathe. With little effort made to create the oppressively humid temperatures of the delta, the energy is put into the words alone, highlighting how much of the play is shrouded in temporal mist.
Without a heavier grip on the title character, however, what does not communicate is the claustrophobia of the entire situation. A patriarchy is on the brink, and the suggestion that the answer is a strong woman who can endure a precarious hot roof out of determination does not, inspire as it really should.
3 stars.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner. Used by kind permission of the Almeida Theatre.