Discover what is being said about Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Tennessee Williams’s classic play.
WhatsOnStage: *** “For all its detail and care, the production never again matches the electricity they generate. It’s illuminating, but strangely passive.”
The Standard: **** “Above all, Frecknall is a tremendous director of actors. The sight of Edgar-Jones, imperious atop the piano, made me briefly wonder what she’d be like as St Joan. Brick is a thankless role – even Paul Newman did little with it in the 1958 film – but Ben-Adir makes him profoundly wretched and possibly incontinent. Pearl Chanda works similar magic with the throwaway role of Brick’s sister-in-law Mae – usually a grotesque, but here another victim passing on the family legacy of bullying.”
The Independent: ** “The star of ‘Normal People’ returns to the stage in ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, Tennessee Williams’s tale of two dysfunctional families – but Edgar-Jones’s Hollywood poise and an unbalanced plot means she fails to make an emotional impact.”
The Guardian: *** “Frecknall’s production is full of stylishness as a whole but it does not plumb the emotional depths at the core of the play. It does switch gears in the second act, though, with the family’s face-offs over the terminal diagnosis of its alpha-patriarch, Big Daddy (who is the last to know he is dying), and the ensuing tussle for his inheritance.”
All That Dazzles: ***** “With Frecknall’s direction and creative elements ensuring this is a production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof for the ages, it is the cast that bring this vision to life and completely excel in their performances.”
The Telegraph: **** “by the end, the production burns itself out and leaves the audience exhausted.”
There Ought to be Clowns: “stylistic choices overriding the depths of Williams’ writing too often and consequently not feeling as effective. Frecknall wouldn’t be the first director to cleave to an aesthetic, nor would we be the first to wish for something a bit different.”
Time Out: ***** “Not everyone is going to love Frecknall’s doomy reimagining of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Big Daddy’s mansion is a house of trapped spirits. But amidst the gloom, there’s a glimmer – what makes Frecknall’s Tennessee Williams productions so powerful is that she always manages to find the goodness in his cracked characters, always makes us care about them. Maggie, Brick, even Big Daddy – there is still light in this infernal darkness, in these anything but normal people.”
London Theatre.co.uk: **** “Performances are strong all round. Lennie James is a morbid but chummy Big Daddy, riddled with questions about his own marriage now his health is failing. Pearl Chanda’s Mae is suitably smug as the wife who has it all and is set on inheriting the family’s 28,000-acre plot of land. There are also some clever visual juxtapositions between upright son Gooper (a suited, eager-to-please Ukweli Roach) and Brick, who remains the golden boy despite spending the third act incapacitated on the floor.”
North West End: **** “There’s no shying away from the fact that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a dense watch at a lengthy three hours (including one interval and one short pause), and the production begins to lose its steam towards the end. But right at that moment, Edgar-Jones injects a final, fatal dose of delusion that brings the show to an excellent conclusion.”
City Am: ** “Frecknall’s production too often feels paced like a sitcom. Characters are rarely given long enough to languish over a line, or enough pause to extract the dramatic effect from Williams’ biting playtext. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is long – some productions skim close to four hours – but it’s not that this 180-minute experience bores. More that it washes over you like a soap opera, the characters often feeling one-note.”
West End Best Friend: ** “Perhaps a lack of set and a lack of any real movement on stage is indeed en vogue in theatre right now. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had echoes of the similarly divisive modern interpretation of Oklahoma! but this is a straight play, without beloved songs to act as a distraction. The execution is a little disappointing and sadly, this latest production is a misfire by Frecknall.”
The i Paper: **** “Edgar-Jones speaks for the majority of the first hour in a turn of bravura endurance, as she prowls sinuously around her surly, taciturn husband, purring seductively like the namesake feline but with claws drawn, ever ready to pounce with killer ferocity when she spots her opportunity.”
The Reviews Hub: **** “Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Maggie does almost all of the talking, a chattering energy that tries to fill the gaping holes in her marriage and the past no one will talk about. But the actor gives too much all of the time, words flow, but there is no sense of the sharp corner turns in Maggie’s speech as her scattered thoughts take the conversation in circles nor any sense of fear in her eyes that even the smallest breath might let Brick escape her.”
The Stage: *** “Rebecca Frecknall turns the volume all the way up on Tennessee Williams’ tale of a family’s implosion.”
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof continues to play at the Almeida Theatre until the 1st February 2025.