Explosive Segal production raises the roof

Maggie (Severn Thompson) and Brick (Todd Sandomirsky) photo: Randy Cole

Kristine Berey

If you’ve seen the film version of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and think you know what to expect from The Segal’s production of the same play, think again. Directed by Greg Kramer, the performance on opening night — met with a standing ovation — was a testament to the immediacy and power of live theatre.

The play’s themes of love and loss, hypocrisy and denial, impending mortality — and also truth, transcendence and hope so fragile as to hang by a thread — have been explored by Tolstoy, Chekov and Thomas Mann. It is clear why Williams is considered to be a writer of their stature. His language is musical, performed with breathtaking virtuosity by the close-knit cast. The counterpoint of relationships between the characters is flawless. The final line, echoing a phrase previously uttered by the brutal and domineering character Big Daddy — lustily played by Barry Flatman — gains strength and poignancy when spoken by his son Brick. This character’s pain, communicated by Todd Sandomirsky in every sound and movement, remains devastating and shattering — still palpable long after the last sounds of clapping die away.

The role of Brick’s love-starved wife is one of the great gifts Williams has given to women in theatre. Severn Thompson plays her with a perfect blend of vulnerability and spunk. Her brilliant smile meeting the enthusiastic audience at the end of the performance revealed how far she must have had to travel from her personal sense of self into the darkness that is Maggie.

It is a credit to Sharon Bakker’s mastery that, from the mouth of Big Mama, a now commonplace expletive still shocks.

The children, symbolizing those who unquestioningly believe what is told to them and who in their certainty may be the cruelest of all, were suitably obnoxious beyond the call of duty.

Williams had to revise the play to please earlier audiences. He believed that in time, taboos would become less ironclad and, freed from the outdated censorship code that had prevailed until 1968, the public would become more receptive to the true meaning of the work. “People today are more accustomed to scenes of sex and violence… the real theme of the play — the general mendacity of our society — is more clearly seen,” Williams, who lived until 1983, once told an interviewer.

The play is about the destructive power of lies, but also about the possibility that a lie can be transformed — willed — into truth. Wil­liams’ 1974 ending, less literal than the sanitized movie version, challenges the audience to make the leap of faith that, perhaps, is a pre-requisite to hope. The result is a deeply moving, unforgettable, poetic experience.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof runs until November 16 at the Leanor and Alvin Segal Theatre, 5170 Côte Ste-Catherine. Tickets: 514-739-2301, 514-790-1245 or admission.com