Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Apollo Theatre, review: Sienna Miller and Jack O’Connell attempt to break the phwoar-o-meter
There are plenty of different ways to skin Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams’ 1955 masterpiece of marital, familial and sexual dysfunction down in Mississippi but I’ve never seen one that goes at it with such kit-off abandon.
Australian director Benedict Andrews attempts to break the phwoar-o-meter by parading his male star, young and willing Jack O’Connell (increasingly a Hollywood contender) in the altogether for an inordinate amount of gasp-inducing time. And those needing a bit of gender-parity on this can relax - his co-star Sienna Miller bravely does the (in)decent thing too, joining him in her birthday suit come the most unbuttoned climax the West End has seen for yonks.
Lights up: water from a freestanding shower cascades down on the 26-year-old O’Connell’s hunched, tattoo’d form (sitting on a raked charcoal-grey carpet) drenching every visible inch, so to speak, aside from a plaster-cast right foot. This is Brick, the former football stud who has taken to the liquor to contend with a sadness that is only gradually, as the evening wears on, coaxed out of him by his terminally afflicted, filthy rich pater, Big Daddy (Colm Meaney, terrific).
When Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor starred in the 1958 film as Brick and ‘Maggie the cat’ - the latter consciously childless, sexually frustrated and determined to counter the condescension of Brick’s ever-breeding brother and his wife - their brooding good-looks was considered the height of raciness. What we see here, which includes Miller slipping off her black negligee in a forlorn attempt to tantalise her indifferent hubby with her breasts, could hardly give Williams more overt sex-appeal.
Is it gratuitous? Andrews made a splash a few years ago at the Young Vic (who are backing this show) with a production of A Streetcar Named Desire that spun Gillian Anderson’s Blanche DuBois round on a slow-revolving carousel; his forte is peeling back layers. For all the flesh on display here, arousal is off the menu; states of mind are hard to fathom. Surrounding a minimalist bedroom with polished gold panels, we’re presented with a world in which there’s plenty of exposing room yet lots of hidden depths.
Even if some of the modernising touches (the use of mobile phones, say) look a bit de trop, there’s no denying that you’re given ample food for thought; have social attitudes, even about the possibility of platonic love, really changed?
Miller confirms she’s not just a pretty feline face - with ravishing blonde hair; her Margaret is a hideously plausible portrait of a woman putting on a brave face to hold back teary desolation. At one point she prowls on all fours towards O’Connell, who looks bleakly, blankly through her - but the liquor tumblers go flying too and there’s a heady sense of sudden violence. I came ready and willing to write this off as mere summer filler. But it’s well acted, stylishly presented and very nicely, erm, tackled: preferred over 9 out of 10 Cats, you might say.
