Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Almeida Theatre

TENNESSEE Williams’s favourite play is a masterpiece of richly drawn characters, open to seemingly endless interpretation.

Set on a cotton plantation in the Deep South, the original 1955 production had a white cast performing as the family of wealthy landowners with black actors playing servants.

Since then productions have featured an all-black cast and those set in the modern era complete with mobile phones and iPads.

Director Rebecca Frecknall, who has taken a deep dive into Tennessee Williams’s work in recent years — having already staged A Streetcar Named Desire and Summer And Smoke — gives a nod to both these approaches.

In her much-anticipated production, Lennie James (The Walking Dead) heads an interracial family in the role of dying tycoon Big Daddy Pollitt, with Clare Burt (Holby City) as his neglected wife Big Mama.

Kingsley Ben-Adir (Peaky Blinders) is Big Daddy’s favourite son, Brick, an alcoholic who shows similar disdain towards his wife, Maggie the Cat, portrayed by Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People).

Rounding out the cast with their brood of “no-necked monsters” are Ukweli Roach (Annika) and Pearl Chanda (Mary & George) as scheming couple Gooper and Mae.

References to the Mississipi Delta plantation remain in the dialogue, but this could be any multi-millionaire or billionaire’s mansion. The enormous silver walls might easily belong in a palatial room in Dubai.

Chloe Lamford’s set is notably stripped of a bed, replacing it with a grand piano. This choice is both effective and problematic. It’s a clever reference to Brick and Maggie’s sexless marriage, but when Big Mama reproaches Maggie for not having children and says “when marriage goes on the rocks, the rocks are there,” all Big Mama can do is tap the piano.

Seb Carrington as the ghost of Brick’s dead football pal Skipper is a nice touch. He sits at the piano, striking chords as emotions rise, and pouring drinks for both himself and Brick — referencing the fact they both hit the bottle amid doubts that their bromance could really be a romance.

At times he stalks the room, a visual embodiment of Brick’s homosexual repression, and at one point even clasps him in a loving embrace.

Brick could be portrayed either as a raging, drunken homophobe or a closeted homosexual, but Frecknall’s take leaves little room for doubt.

The play is very much one in which there could be no likeable characters. Here there’s sympathy for the devils.

Ben-Adir embodies the inebriated jock Brick but brings a softness, even flashing the occasional smile. Edgar-Jones displays lashings of Sienna Miller-sultriness and, despite her manipulation, you end up rooting for her in the end. James is fearsome enough as Big Daddy, but he could be nastier still.

There’s outrage aplenty in this production, and some pain, but we never quite get to the dark night of the soul.

Runs at Almeida until February 1. Box Office on 020 7359 4404.