By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

WHEN?: Friday 27 December 2024, runs through 1 February 2025 RUNTIME: 180 minutes (including 2 intervals)

There’s a ghost at the piano in Rebecca Frecknall’s (A Streetcar Named Desire, Almeida) take on Tennessee Williams’ favourite of all his acclaimed plays who may be Skipper, whose love dared speak its name to ageing football jock Brick, but was rebuffed.

• Read on for reasons including how Frecknall’s treatment of the material emphasises Maggie’s agency and, stylistically, it’s an absolute triumph

Normal People‘s Edgar-Jones (pictured above on the piano) is Brick’s wife Maggie, the titular twitchy cat, who confronts her husband about the reason for his alcoholism and lack of love for her as her father-in-law Big Daddy, well drawn by Lennie James (A Number, Old Vic), contemplates his mortality and which of his children should inherit the family business.

If that all sounds a little like TV’s Succession, it’s testament to how successful and influential Williams’ 3-act play set at the Mississippi plantation home of the Pollitt family has become.

We last reviewed Cat in 2017 when Jack O’Connell’s Brick went full-frontal and here Kingsley Ben-Adir goes barefoot but otherwise remains almost fully-clothed giving us a man confused rather than besotted by his youthful same-sex friendship that led to his teammate’s suicide.

We learn the Pollitt family is riven by lies and self-deception as the couples that underpin it are out of love with each other and Big Daddy’s eldest son Gooper, played straight and sober by Ukweli Roach (Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train, Young Vic) is plotting to usurp his brother in his father’s affections by dwelling on Brick and Maggie’s failure to conceive.

It’s a compelling set-up enhanced by Frecknall’s onstage piano as Seb Carrington’s (Summer And Smoke, Almeida) Skipper the ghost plays discordantly while serving Brick more drinks, setting off the metronomic click Brick needs to hear to find peace from his alcoholism, embracing him, or dancing atop the piano as Maggie the cat does.

Edgar Jones is mesmeric and sinewy as the sensual wife who’s bagged the hot jock who is no longer into her but needs to be impregnated by him to fulfil Big Daddy’s dream of passing on his legacy to his favoured younger son who failed to make the most of his childhood promise and is now tortured by the football commentating career he’s now also ruining.

The leads here have all found most success on the cinema or TV screen but you would never know it from our circle seat because the venue may be intimate but the acting is brilliantly theatrical rather than Storm Sigourney Weaver minimal.

James in particular inhabits a gnarly character who can display forgiveness for his son’s potential homosexuality but is also bullying the devoted wife – Clare Burt (Sondheim’s Old Friends, Gielgud Theatre) is strong yet heartbreaking – who can’t bear the news Big Daddy’s cancer is terminal.

We’re baffled by the mixed reviews for this terrific production which has sold out its run at this theatre and surely deserves a West End transfer soon.

We weren’t convinced initially by Ben-Adir’s Brick but as he gets more drunk as the show goes on his inability to connect with his father is exposed and his confusion by the situation he finds himself in became believable.

Like TV’s Succession, the situation is complicated, empathy hard to find and the dealings underhand but Frecknall’s treatment of the material emphasises Maggie’s agency and, stylistically, it’s an absolute triumph if a little indulgently long.

Brilliant though. And, as Edgar Jones finds her feet in Hollywood, definitely worth both desiring and witnessing if you can. Can’t wait for Frecknall and outgoing Almeida artistic director Rupert Goold to arrive at the Old Vic.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Almeida Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen an Almeida Theatre before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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