Almeida
There is neither a silent nor holy night featured in the Almeida’s big December production. Instead, we get all the sweaty sauce-sodden scraping of the Pollitt family in a poisonously un-festive production.
Tennessee Williams’s most classical play is a sprawling family drama set (not so shockingly) in the Deep South. The famous 1958 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman still looming large, it is a feast of rotten love and unrequited dreams. A collection of pecking vultures around the vast legacy at stake—because, of course, there is.
But Spanish moss and curling creepers over the antebellum white-washed walls are nowhere to be seen. Chloe Lamford’s set is a cube of reflective patterned wallpaper and a grand piano with gaping gaps on every side. A stripped back set is almost expected at the Almeida and although visually interesting the starkness muddles a lot of the characters’ entrances and exits.
Rebecca Frecknall has crafted a production in limbo (in her own words). Partially modernised with Moi Tran cloaking some of the characters in modern opulence and some in 50s style cuts. Without doors the idea is to conjure up a layered mansion with thin wooden doors and no privacy, characters plummet in at the worst possible moments. But some are left gazing into space at a suddenly closed door, and the eye-watering wealth of the family is missing.
Cast-wise we have more success, this in-between dreamland frees the play from its historic prejudice, allowing a bigger range of actors into the Southern Planter dynasty. Kingsley Ben-Adir is Brick: hopelessly drunk throughout, such a visceral and realistic depiction. Shattered dreams and half-truths slip past his loose lips as we see the rage of alcoholism, casting Newman’s depiction as well-mannered and a little prudish in comparison. Stalked by his close “friend” Skipper (Seb Carrington) who refreshingly plays the piano, drinks with his tormentor, and prowls around the action from beyond the grave. Clare Burt is a harangued Big Momma, avoiding the frowsiness expected and giving us a woman trying her best to keep her family from devouring itself. Lennie James as Big Daddy brings a different spin on the patriarch, less cigars and more sense, bleak realism and a thoroughly modern capitalist, very much in the view of Succession. Pearl Chanda is the glib conniving Sister Woman, as she simpers and snaps, unable to contain her avarice, yet not allowing herself simply to be the closest the play gets to comic relief.
Daisy Edgar-Jones jumps from TV to theatrical fame easily. Her Maggie is sharper than Taylor’s. A woman determined to live, but unable to make her husband (Brick) love her she also prowls, baying, proclaiming herself “the cat on the hot tin roof”. Shards of hate and hard angles shoot out from her at almost every other character, snarling through the voluminous prose. Her initial almost uninterrupted monologue, given minimal slurred murmurs from Ben-Adir is most demanding. Pirouetting in her slip, touching on topics she knows she shouldn’t with anxious mental fingers digging at her own and her husband’s scars. Step aside Agamemnon and Clytemnestra as together they take the dubious honour as theatre’s unhappiest couple, well done Edgar-Jones and Ben-Adir, now go home and cry.
Frecknall’s attempt to distance us from the heat and specific requirements of the 1950s South is a bold choice. Her focus on people’s inability to connect and be honest sweeps the play along, conversations between son and father, wife and husband continually interrupted by the ever-present family rattling around the house. Performances throughout are at a high level but this no man’s land of time and place keeps everything suspended somewhat, unable to connect, swaying around in the dark. On stage ghosts, and repeated catlike movements seem more appropriate for memory-laden works such as A Glass Menagerie as this combative family drama requires a more brutal reality. Nevertheless, this glass of 100proof wretchedness is gulped down by us the audience, a perfect panacea to the pervasive Christmas cheer rioting around outside the theatre.
