The Mendacity Of Hope.
Starring: Jack O'Connell, Sienna Miller & Colm Meaney. Director: Benedict Andrews.
"Who are you"? Sienna Miller desperately asks her on-stage husband Jack O'Connell and herself all at the same time as she stares into the tortured soul of her bedrooms vanity mirror like it was a gateway to another dimension. An alternate reality that reflects what she really wants and wishes to see. A happy wife. A happy life. All in matrimony with what marriage is meant to be. The white picket fence that runs longer than the honeymoon period, the whole nine. But Maggie 'The Cat' feels like one with the clipped claws of it's paws on a hot tin roof. And as she's clinging on for dear life with her polished nails her husband is coaxing or advising her to just "jump off the roof", like he's trying to tell her to just let go or be done with it all. "Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the one you love doesn't love you", she pleadingly reaches out to him, sat next to him on bed like a consoling friend. In what's meant to be "their" room, one staircase step up from living. But all the loving is lost when they merely "occupy the same cage". Imprisoned by neglect. Physically and mentally. The soul is still there, but what about the heart? And what of the spirit? As in this haunted house the only respite, however brief comes at the bottom of a glass or ashtray. And no matter how much this Maggie may ignite her look like one last cigarette. From her negligee to her made up cocktail dress she can't keep her husbands mixed mind off the drink and into bed...or just the loving embrace of her tender arms. This blonde bombshell, femme fatale feline married into wealth, but is now poorer instead of richer when it comes to a pockets empty love. Sizzling with heartbroken heat, this is a scorching Sienna Miller's time to shine. As the amazing actress of undervalued versatility, who may also be the hardest working one of late ('Foxcatcher', 'American Sniper', 'Burnt', (both with Bradley Cooper who was around this time so amazing in the Broadway/West End 'The Elephant Man' play that he should remake it for another adaptation on screen), 'Black Mass', 'Live By Night', 'High Rise' and 'Lost City Of Z') gives us her best work by far to date. And those tabloids thought this former 'South Kensington', 'Factory Girl' was just 'Alfie' Jude Law's former flame. Then just those burnt out pages wait until she makes real playbill and theatre top headlines as she rises off this tin roof like the flames of a phoenix.
If only this Jack could look up to take notice. But O'Connell simply can't stop staring at his scotch that keeps getting refilled and refreshed by the shower he sits in. The 'Skins' star completely stark naked physically and emotionally, just like Sienna for the most intimate performance you'll see from either of these big names only wearing their tattoos. That's just the unfiltered purity of theatre. And this was the 'Starred Up' breakthrough talent that showed even imprisoned he was 'Unbroken' in wars like the Northern Ireland one of '71' or the Wall Street versus main street one of Jodie Foster's 'Money Monster', stealing the show from Julia Roberts and George Clooney like he had a gun to his head. This Brick former football star has fallen like his loose namesake, or the ball he dropped. Now the only crutch that picks him up, apart from the one that assists his legs plaster cast is the one that comes with a screw top. But he'll never find "that click" he's looking for in his head if he's always unfastening the bottle. "Time just outran me" the former touchdown hero quiveringly tells his Big Daddy. "Liquors one way out, deaths the other" he Southern drawls into depression with little comfort to take the edge off. Chasing each shot like gasoline dousing his internal, raging fire. And like the bottom of the glass has no burning end. He's beyond gone. Far from lost. Or maybe he's just lost someone. His wife...even if she is standing right in front of him, beside him and behind him. Or maybe it's this quarterbacks former Skipper. Gone to the same suicide, Brick keeps teasing in this house drink by drink as he bites the cork out the top. Not knowing if the next half measure or empty bottle is going to keep him from...or take him there. His only detox comes in the cold shower he drowns himself in almost as much as alcohol. Even in his soaked to the bones clothes, as even his mother weathers the rain to console him as he throws his arm around her like a retired football player who can't quite put the spiral on the pigskin like he used to. Steam rising from his burdened shoulders like smoke from a burned down to the ground foundations of a home. How's he going to keep it together when all the pieces he's trying to make click are shattered like the glass he out of the numb, rage shatters against the same vanity mirror that only reveals more cracks?
There's only so much surface that can take all this abuse of substance. But you'll love the mendacity of it all. Just like you will Big Daddy...and we aren't talking about a Sandler comedy. But you'll love this loveable rouge and the rest of his gone that way family (they always do so in that finacially nurtured nature when it comes to money marked "inheritance", if there's a will to that way). And yes you do recognise him. That's Colm Meaney. 'Star Trek: The Next Generations' answer to their very own version of Scottie and the character actor who was in the partnering background of every other action thriller of the 90's. But here the tuxedo shedding, cigar chomping Meaney really means it with his biggest role to date. Chewing the scenery and stealing it like everyone wants to do his plantation profit. And down on the roof, Australian theatre director Benedict Andrews brings it all together in Young Vic's West End like he did with his version of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. And now with another from Tennessee Williams, this Mississippi masterpiece is given the theatre treatment it deserves. From the sparkling shadows of the illuminating lighting, all the way down to the stirring scoring on this sparsely straight forward, but simply sublime set. All you need for this homebound drama is a bed, nightstand and neon frame to light up this Pulitzer Prize winning play that needs to connect with a modern crowd desensitised by all they can see on a smaller screen illuminated in front of them at their fingertips, whether intermission or not. But it really does share a trend amongst the crowd like something seat to seat, word of mouth viral. One of love, life and loss that resonates with everyone, no matter if they are clutching a program or a phone bill. Because when it comes down to it all our hearts end up in the same place after all. This gets you all the way to your bones. And there's a victory in that understanding. Just like there is with our leading man and lady lights, Miller and O'Connell. Sienna and Jack even take this stories conceptual themes higher than the Hollywood sanitised classic piece of adapted cinema starring icons Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, who these young legends meet in legacy when it comes to sticking to the true nature of the script here. Two hearts connected by being beautiful, but not weak people. Refusing to give up gracefully and staying on that roof for as long as they can take. Because it takes more guts to live than it does to die in this life. Just like it does to love too. This perfectly performed, powerful play sinks into your every closeted secret, so raw and real it stares at your very soul and refuses to look away until you blink. And once 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' gets its claws into and under your skin, it scars like a fire brand that will never leave you like the one who got away. Till death do your heart part. CLICK! TIM DAVID HARVEY.
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