UNCUT AND BOLD

Park Cinema network continues the screening of the most famous plays of the best theatres in the world. This mainly includes the productions of the theatres of London, New York, Moscow, as well as the nominees for the leading Russian theatrical award, the Golden Mask. Theatre HD is a great opportunity for theatre and movie fans to see their favourite actors not only on screen but also on stage. Without leaving the country, it can fast-forward you in space to a theatre on the other end of the world and make you virtually experience the same emotions as the real audience. This time we are taken to the Yong Vic Theatre in London to watch on a movie screen Benedict Andrews’ production of the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof based on Tennessee Williams’ play of the same name. Later, at the beginning of the second act, we will hear and see a dialogue of a London journalist with artistic director of the theatre, David Lan (playwright), whose motto is: “Great games are for great spectators, now and in the future.”

Young Vic

A bit of a history… The theatre was founded on the initiative and will of a group of young and bold people longing for some creative freedom and independence after the Second World War (1946). Thus, they founded their own theatre, Young Vic, which is a spin-off of the academic national theatre Old Vic. It is a common phenomenon for a developing creative thought well known in the centuries-old history of the world theatre.

Young Vic has been a creative platform for professional self-expression of young actors and directors such as Timothy Dalton, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Clive Owen, Jude Law, and so on. Its present idols are Sienna Miller and Jack O'Connell starring as Maggie and Brick in the premiere of The Cat... in 2017. It seems Benedict Andrews has a special talent of creating stars. After the success of A Streetcar Named Desire in 2014 starring Gillian Anderson as Blanche DuBois, he made both the theatre and the actress famous and confirmed that the reputation of the “very modern, popular and favourite” London theatre was by no means a product of tabloids or a publicity stunt. This is a reality of our days: Young Vic is highly popular and demanded because it is in tune with its audience and has that magic chemistry that helps to build thick-and-thin relations with the fans.

Young Vic is one of the most prestigious and visited theatres in London. It has three stages: the main stage for 500 spectators and two extra ones for 70 and 150. Despite its tremendous success among the local audiences and tourists, the theatre periodically stages its plays at the Apollo Theatre, which can accommodate 796 people at once.

Repertoire

The repertoire of the Young Vic includes classical plays by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Garcia Lorca, and Anton Chekhov. This is a serious drama, which has nothing to do with the contemporary genre of entertainment. The management believes that this kind of drama is as relevant and demanded today as ever, since the audience needs to have heart-to-heart conversations every now and then. The content matters more than the form here. As a rule, the performances are designed in a very laconic form: no eye-candy bells and whistles to impress your imagination but some serious stuff to touch you psychologically. It is all about the content that reveals the psychological state of characters, their emotions and thoughts. That is why the audiences find both the directors and actors very interesting. One cannot see empty or half-empty halls in the Young Vic. Since the plays preserve their original format, each of them can take three hours or more. Every single word is important and valuable because it expresses the life of a character with his everyday problems. And the audience understands the characters clearly!

Director

Benedict Andrews, director of the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: “Tennessee Williams created strong and very passionate characters. He is interested in the nature of deep human emotions experiencing a serious psychological crisis. Personal and social matters are intertwined; and it seems that this play has become frighteningly relevant in the sense that it shows what happens when people have to take off their masks. To save themselves and their lives, they have to fight the lies that have enwrapped their lives like a web.”

Back in 2014, Benedict Andrews staged another play by T. Williams in the Young Vic, A Streetcar Named Desire. Now, he came back to stage The Cat… and to talk with his audience about what he cares about, finding solutions to critical situations that provoke lies, alcohol addiction, betrayal and result in a loss of oneself, incurable diseases, and family breakdown. Both the director and artistic director believe that any modern theatre must remain vivid because it is for the living people, which means that it can and must heal souls and minds helping to find solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems.

Plot

This is the story of the Pollitt family, which takes place on a hot summer day at their cotton plantation in Mississippi. We can see the whole family on stage: Big Daddy (Colm Meaney), Big Mama (Lisa Palfrey), their sons Gooper (Brian Gleeson) with his wife Mae (Hayley Squires) and children, Brick (Jack O'Connell) with his wife Maggie (Sienna Miller) and the friends of their parents, Doctor Baugh (Richard Hansell) and Reverend Tooker (Michael J. Shannon). They gathered to celebrate the anniversary birthday of Big Daddy. And as usually happens in families where no one has sincere feelings of love or even affection to other family members, conflicts are inevitable part of life. What does lie beneath the total alienation that has rooted in this family almost since the very first day of its existence? The director is slowly exploring this question by immersing his characters and the audience in a detailed study of human characters with all their positive and negative sides. This languid dive lasts for slightly more than three hours including the break… It is amazing! The cast is not afraid of being boring, uninteresting, or that the audience will be overloaded with text. That is why they do not practice a rapid speech on stage contrary to what often happens in our theatres, when the cast is anxious about using too much text thinking that it will not be listened to anyway!

Alas, this happens when the actors, at the behest of director, become just talking heads and when the production is limited to a trivial illustration of the script. But the audience can clearly see that the actors are not interested in their characters at all, as they have merely tried to memorise the script and mise-en-scenes. This is the situation in our theatres today. Such an approximation is often passed off as a modern theatrical style or an attempt to bring the production in line with the spirit of the age. Unfortunately, the hearts of our actors are not in tune with the hearts of their characters. According to someone's distorted view of modern theatre, being modern means being dynamic in everything: pronunciation, stage movements and so on. Let’s play fast and not boring! As a result, all these misinterpretations, false and simulated stage performances become boring and make us long for the real art and theatre that we still love and cherish...

One can feel the colossal psychological immersion of British actors, who follow each and every word of the playwright empathically, as if they truly live the lives of their characters on stage. It is this informal professional attitude that makes the performance so successful and independent of any technical tricks or scandalous publicity stunts!

Play

Maggie: I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof!

Brick: Then jump off the roof...

And Maggie jumps. Not in literal sense, of course. But she is the only one in this family who can tell the truth about the things that other members prefer keeping silence about. In fact, she saves everyone who is used to building relations on understatements, lies, and antipathy. Maggie “jumps” because she loves her husband, Brick, and because his “escape” into alcohol is killing both him and their love. The truth slowly but emotionally unveils in front of us: everyone in this house is dreaming of love but it turns out that in fact none of them knows what is to love and to be loved. Because they are afraid. The life is too short. It passes quickly. So quickly that we cannot waste the days lived without joy that only love can give. Maggie the Cat jumped off the hot tin roof to revive lively beats of thought and feelings in this house.

Now about a couple of details that some of us may consider a tribute to our times: nudity on stage.

The play begins with Brick taking a shower absolutely naked on a hot summer day. Then Maggie appears. She undresses taking off her skirt, pantyhose, and underwear. The actress does not hide behind the scene or a wardrobe door. She behaves as the people of her marital status normally do. And this behaviour unveils a trivial and psychological truth. Her acts do not seem annoying, shameful or embarrassing even though the actor commits this action right before the audience. You do not notice her nakedness, as it does not seem an unusual or defiantly shocking act! You treat it like a routine family situation, like the truth you are used to see and hear every day! In fact, the undressing of characters on stage is not a common practice for us. And this is right! But when it happens and an actor removes part of his clothes, it still does not look aesthetically pleasing. Firstly, our actors have been brought up on different concepts, and their nakedness does not look attractive from both the aesthetic and moral points of view. When they follow director’s instructions by the letter, it looks so unnatural that the audience feels uncomfortable. Actors are pushed to go against themselves, their views, their understanding of the relevance of mise-en-scène. Secondly, stripping naked on stage is not only a culture but also a big art that can please the audience aesthetically, without causing a sense of rejection! But this act may turn into a big art only when the actor is able to treat the exposure of his body as an artistic act, not a sinful one. But it is not going to happen any time soon because at the genetic level we realise that exposing a naked human body is an immoral and sinful act. Genetic taboos prevent us from turning it into art. And it is strange that our directors do not realise this sensible moment of our mentality.

In general, the relations between the members of the Pollitt family worth consideration, the family so big and so... dysfunctional! And it looks so similar to many other families around the world. A play written back in 1955 proves incredibly relevant today, at the beginning of the 21^st century, including for us.