PATRICK MARIMON reviews Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: Daisy's radiant, but this Cat left me cold

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Almeida Theatre, London)

Verdict: Too cool

Rating:

Two years ago, Paul ‘Gladiator II’ Mescal muscled into the role of himbo Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida Theatre.

This year it’s his partner from the Irish student bonk-athon TV drama Normal People, Daisy Edgar-Jones, headlining as sex-starved Maggie in another Williams 1950s classic, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Significantly, Edgar-Jones — like Mescal — doesn’t steal the show.

In Mescal’s case it was Patsy Ferran who stepped in at the last minute to blow audiences away as Blanche DuBois — and the pair can be seen again in the West End in February. For now, in Cat, it’s Kingsley Ben-Adir who transfixed me as Brick, a man in alcoholic despair.

Rebecca Frecknall’s production, a stylish, art-house nervous breakdown, has been long sold out and ticketless fans must pray for another West End transfer.

But they needn’t hold their breath… Chloe Lamford’s set replaces the heat of the title with an ice box set of zinc tiles, and a grand piano festooned with half-finished drinks. It’s a cold representation of a Mississippi cotton plantation in which former athlete Brick struggles to hide his homosexuality from his wife, Maggie, his father Big Daddy (Lennie James) and — most of all — himself.

Ben-Adir is a Buddha of passive aggression. With one leg in plaster, he pivots, hops and crawls about — but only to top-up his glass of bourbon.

Inquisitors are kept at bay with grunts. His voice is thick with boozers’ catarrh, and the lights in his eyes are switched off. Yet he has a lyrical slur: a Brando-ish smouldering volcano. Inevitably, that makes him hard to be around. Perhaps it’s why the radiant Edgar-Jones is so shrill as she tries to hack through his alcoholic firewall.

She’s prattling, acidic, and predatory — prowling the stage with careful cat movements. Yet, despite looking stunning in a silk slip, Brick just bats off her advances. Even Big Daddy can’t breach his son’s defences. He supposes he can buddy up by spewing misogynistic bile. And although James ameliorates that with self-pity, Ben-Adir knocks it back — with interest.

All along, a mystery pianist (Seb Carrington) plays discordant jazz to illustrate Brick’s inner agonies — suggesting he’s also the ghost of Brick’s love, Skipper (a role not written by Williams).

Sounds heavy? It is. But it’s as disengaging as Brick’s anaesthetised emotional state. We, the audience, are locked out as surely as Big Daddy’s family.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof runs until February 2. 

The Invention Of Love (Hampstead Theatre, London)

Verdict: Literary marathon

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Tom Stoppard’s 1997 play The Invention Of Love — now revived at Hampstead Theatre, starring Simon Russell Beale — is an intellectual feast, but one likely to defeat all but the most tenacious.

It tells the tale of Victorian classical scholar and poet A.E. Housman. Set in the afterlife, he meets the literary establishment, from the sexually squeamish John Ruskin to the sexually revolutionary Oscar Wilde. An unrequited love story provides interest as Housman pines for fellow student Moses Jackson.

Twelve actors in multiple roles lecture each other on historical and philological research.

The privilege of lecturing the audience is reserved for Russell Beale’s Housman, who considers Greek and Latin grammar while gazing dreamily into the atmosphere. Being Stoppard, at least it’s laced with wry humour.

Blanche McIntyre’s production runs through Stoppard’s complexities as if they didn’t exist, staging croquet matches and billiard games. Performed with levity and tenderness as it is, at three hours it’s beyond most people’s endurance.

The Invention of Love runs until February 2. 

A brilliantly batty musical masterpiece

The Producers (Menier Chocolate Factory, London)

Verdict: All Reich on the night

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Hollywood comedy legend Mel Brooks is a glorious stranger to political correctness. The same applies to his brilliantly batty musical about shyster Broadway producers staging an Adolf Hitler song-and-dance show. And now, thanks to Patrick Marber’s rambunctious revival, it remains a satirical masterpiece — even if it’s starting to show its age.

The 2001 Broadway hit, based on Brooks’s 1967 film, gleefully stereotypes anyone who’s anyone — but is rollicking great fun thanks to its whopping heart and a terrific turn from Andy Nyman as impecunious producer Max Bialystock.

His idea is to raise $2million from naive New York spinsters for a shoestring production that’s bound to fail — so he can scarper to Rio with the embezzled cash.

To this end Max procures a tasteless script celebrating the Fuhrer in a homo-erotic love story. Cue song: ‘Keep it sassy, keep it classy, keep it gay!’

Originally played by Zero Mostel in the film, Nyman is a perfectly sleazy Max. Short, stout and seedy in a gravy-stained suit, with the comic timing of a seasoned stand-up, he declares: ‘I’m a back-stabbing, despicable crook, but I had no choice — I’m a Broadway producer!’

Nyman near sings himself hoarse, while Marc Antolin as his quivering wimp of a sidekick, Leopold Bloom, falls for Swedish secretary Ulla (Joanna Woodward, taking the Benny Hill biscuit for sexual innuendo).

Also outstanding is Trevor Ashley as outrageous drag-queen director Roger De Bris, with a live-in team of preening associates. And Harry Morrison commands much mirth as the Lederhosen-clad writer, Franz, who keeps a flock of Nazi pigeons with swastikas on their backs.

There are times when the mugging is too strenuous and the dancers overload the boutique stage. But you don’t want to miss Ashley’s entrance as a fabulous sequined Fuhrer on a gold chariot pulled by a slave for the outrageous show-stopping number, Springtime For Hitler.

The Producers runs until March 1 

Clary's saucy panto delivers plenty of bang for your buck

Robin Hood (London Palladium)

Verdict: Filthy fun

Rating:

No one ever accused Julian Clary of being subtle, and so it proves again in this spectacular production, directed by Michael Harrison.

The script is, as you might imagine, very saucy — although children will be oblivious to some of the cleverly written filth. 

Mentioning an encounter in Sherwood Forest with a laden-down Little John (Tosh Wanogho-Maud), Robin (Clary) makes a joke about ‘unloading’.

There’s much, much more of that in a show that — considering the eye-watering seat prices — gives plenty of bang for your buck.

A terrific ensemble performs song-and-dance numbers, there’s great comedy from ventriloquist Paul Zerdin, plus a (rather shoehorned-in) 3-D sequence. And Nigel Havers as Friar Tuck on the receiving end of Mr Clary’s waspish gags.

Jane McDonald, singing beautifully in her panto debut, proves herself to be a great sport as the eternally frustrated Maid Marion.

Robin Hood runs until January 12. 

Dick Whittington And His Cat (Hackney Empire)

Verdict: What a dame!

Rating:

Clive Rowe dons false bosoms again to play the Dame in Hackney Empire’s Dick Whittington. He also directs, in a script by Will Brenton that’s cleaner than some recent pantos here — although Rowe’s Sarah the Cook is deliciously flirty with the dads in the audience.

The show mostly sticks to the folk tale, although there’s a scene set on a desert island that appears to serve purely as a setting for a big song-and-dance number.

Cleo Pettitt’s set and costumes are a delight as Mr Rowe sashays about dressed as, variously, a saucy tomato, a cash register (‘You can rifle through my loose change any time you like’) and, most memorably, a liner named Hello Buoys.

The lovers (Kandaka Moore as Dick and Aryana Ramkhalawon as Alice) are sweet, if underwhelming, but great support comes from Empire stalwart Kat B as Tommy the Cat.

Dick Whittington and His Cat runs until January 5 

Goldie Frocks And The Bear Mitzvah (JW3, London)

Verdict: Most bear-able

Rating:

by Veronica Lee for the Daily Mail 

Panto with a Jewish twist made its welcome debut at this theatre last year, and now its writer, Nick Cassenbaum, follows up with an even stronger effort, which marries the folk tale of Goldilocks (or Goldie Frocks, in this case) with London’s rich Jewish history, kletzmer music and some broad humour.

Mr Cassenbaum’s lively script is littered with Yiddish - surely the most expressive of languages - which adds to the fun in a gag-filled show.

Debbie Chazen is a warm-hearted Mama Behr, whose son (Frankie Thompson) is being bar mitzvah-ed.

Goldie Frocks (Heloise Lowenthal), a talented seamstress at the workshop of evil East End factory owner Calvin Brine (Simon Yadoo), has been sent, unknowingly, to capture Baby so Brine can make him into a coat. With the help of old-time Eastender Maurice Bloom (Ian Saville, who does some clever stage magic), she thwarts his plans.

Abi Anderson’s production could do with some more zip, particularly in the first half, but this is a cheery tale with lots of laughs.

Goldie Frocks and The Bear Mitzvah runs until January 5 

Jack and the Beanstalk (Nottingham Playhouse)

Verdict: Old-fashioned fun

Rating:

by Veronica Lee for the Daily Mail 

Writer/director Adam Penford serves up a delightful family show, a traditional panto without gimmicks or TV stars, stuffed full of gags and stage business – including dancing chickens.

John Elkington is terrific as Dame Daisy Trott, who appears in an array of magnificent creations – as an ice-cream cornet, a peapod, and even as a farm – and keeps things rattling along.

In this he's helped by sidekicks Silly Billy (Bradley Judge) and Pat the Cow (Alice Redmond) as they, er, milk every ounce of comedy from their scenes. And the slosh scene – set in a dairy - is particularly inventive.

There are plenty of opportunities for the audience to sing along to the poppy tunes and to get their boos and hisses out for Tom Hopcroft's suitably villainous Fleshcreep.

The lovers (Finton Flynn as Jack and Jewelle Hutchinson as Jill) sing beautifully, and Cleo Pettitt's colourful set and costumes add real value to proceedings.

Jack and the Beanstalk runs until 18 January

Bryn’s Christmas (Royal Festival Hall)

Verdict: Festive and heartwarming

Rating:

By Tully Potter for the Daily Mail 

Sir Bryn Terfel is the real thing. He is not an avatar or a hologram or an AI-generated meme. He does not whimper into a microphone in a fake American accent, or rap incomprehensibly on a single note. He sings like the Welsh legend he is.

A big figure who can make the Albert Hall seem small when he appears at the Proms, he strode on to the Royal Festival Hall stage looking as if he could tuck half the Welsh National Opera Orchestra under one arm and slip conductor Paul Bateman into his breast pocket.

‘Hark! The herald angels sing’, delivered in full voice with one verse in Welsh, established that at 59 his bass-baritone was still in fine fettle: every syllable was clarion-clear, with perfect diction, articulation and beautiful vowels. He told us this carol, the third most popular with the public, was his own favourite.

Then it was the turn of South African soprano Pumeza Matshikiza, another with perfect enunciation and crystalline vowels.

She gave us two solos in the first half, the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria and the Arlen-Harburg hit Over The Rainbow, and duetted with Terfel. He sang Edelweiss, starting with just harp accompaniment, ‘Tua Bethlem dref’ and ‘Still, still, still’.

In the second half we had some of the music the two stars were born to sing, the Cavatina from Aleko by Rachmaninov, in Russian, and Puccini’s ‘O mio babbino caro’, as well as Adam’s noble Cantique De Noel and the ‘Bruderlein’ duet from Die Fledermaus. Terfel managed to make Trees unsentimental and followed up with Joseph’s Carol by Rutter.

There were plenty of other carols and several encores, including the South African lullaby that Miriam Makeba used to sing. Bateman’s arrangements were excellent and he conducted the splendid orchestra with brio. It was a nice idea to have Delius’s Sleigh Ride instead of the usual Leroy Anderson.

Among various misprints in the programme, my favourite was ‘Trish-Trasch Polka’ (oh come on – it isn’t that bad).

The audience, with a large Welsh contingent who responded whenever Terfel deviated into their mother tongue, were overjoyed.

If Sir Bryn’s caravan comes to rest anywhere near your locality, try to hear him. He is a proper singer.