Cat On A Hot Tin Roof - Royal Exchange Manchester

One of my first trips to the REx was to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last time it was on there, which google tells me was 8 years ago. It’s a great play but I’ve seen at least three other productions of it since then, so not in a rush to see another one, unless the cast is particularly exciting. Surprised to see another Tennessee Williams so soon after Glass Menagerie.

Cancelled tonight.

I caught the Matinee yesterday and thought it was mostly fine.
Maggie, Brick, Big Mamma and Pappa notably good.

I found the production elements pretty dull and distracting for a REX production, unfortunately. It lacked any clarity and didn't know when or where it wanted to be. Set, Music and Costume really conflicted throughout. Are we in a modern millionaires mansion? Music, some props and costume would imply so, so why's a rickety old grandfather clock ticking away? Are a millionaire couple like Big Mamma and Pappa really going to have a vase of Daffodils in one room? The music of Jay Z, Stormzy and Rhianna etc, implies a modern setting, but Brick, the Preacher and Doctor look like they've fallen out of a 50s film.
Having the stage purge buckets of smoke during the scene changes made absolutely no sense and that monstrous mobile of speakers was all but superfluous apart from a line shoehorned in to reference it. Directors, just because something can, doesn't mean it.
If they wanted to really hammer home the use of the mobile over the bed to taunt the characters on stage about childhood, life, money and ambition, those 7 speakers could have been replaced by enlarged objects, modern status symbols (champagne, Dior bags, high heels, Mercedes Keys, a credit Card, an ipad etc). I think having those objects of status (the things people like influencers flaunt to show they have made something of themselves) would really have made Maggies monologues punch. Instead they threw away one line of "look at our new speaker system" for a scene change. That really annoyed me.

The lighting and sound at times felt like a college production; buckets of reverb on anyone 'outside' made them sound ghostly and eerie instead of just away. The weird mix of colours (orange and yellow-reds and greens) just seemed to cast lots of shadows on the stage with the exception of half way through Brick and Big Pappa's exchange where the lighting snapped to whites, grays and blues and suddenly everything looked right, but this soon faded away with the transition to the storm. Again, it felt like the use of colour for the sake of it. IMO, lighting this production in whites and blues would have left the characters exposed and emphasised an underlying vulnerability. Granted this is set in the stifling Memphis heat, but theres other ways to imply that than orange.

Good cast, bad production.