A Southern US family gathers to celebrate the birthday of its patriarch, who is seriously ill but from whom the truth has been hidden. Though his elder son is keen to inherit his sprawling estate, it is his younger, less successful son for whom he holds true affection. As the story begins, this son is in alcoholic decline following the death of a close male friend, and his frustrated wife, who has been instrumental in forcing him to face difficult truths about himself that he continues to deny via the bottle, is trying once again to engage with him. She’s the titular cat on a hot tin roof, full of restless energy and determination, and liable to yowl.

There is arguably an imbalance in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It grants a seemingly inordinate amount of time to its largely two-handed first act in which Maggie ‘The Cat’ (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) expounds at length about relationships and sexuality to her physically and emotionally injured husband, Brick (Richard Flood). His level of interest in what she has to say seems minimal. This puts tremendous weight on the female lead, who has to establish the entire tone of the play by juggling Tennessee Williams’ whirl of contradicting words and emotions with the panorama of sexual cruelty and masochism that unfolds before the plot kicks in. She also has to manage the poetry of it: the wild transitions and reflexive juxtapositions that invite us to view her as the live wire of the title – a catalyst for the confrontation of the truth with which the play is centrally concerned. “Truth is something desperate,” says Brick, “and she’s got it.”

Fiona O’Shaughnessy puts a tremendous amount of work into the part. She struts and slinks around the stage under Mark Brokaw’s direction, and attempts to convey the required restless energy that embodies this “desperation” in a series of sensuous stretches and snappy movements. She pushes her soft voice towards the husky side while reigning in the wispy pout of some of her more familiar characterisations. She tells us Maggie is “consumed by envy and eaten up with longing”, and assures us she has become “hard, frantic, and cruel”. She is required to engage a seemingly endless torrent of precise articulations of difficult emotions and transitions between them. Too frequently though, O’Shaughnessy seems to be describing things that are not being conveyed, and the performance feels remote from the character. The result is that this long act seems leaden.

I’m not entirely sure putting an interval at the end of the act is the best way to manage the imbalance. In fact, the impression is created that the show ‘improves’ in its second half, which actually isn’t fair to either the text or to O’Shaughnessy’s performance. The play does become more dynamic when the ensemble arrives and there are more and broader dimensions of plot and ranges of performance to absorb. Owen Roe is a terrific Big Daddy, arriving haggard and dishevelled but full of commanding power and demanding energy tempered by vulnerability. This plays beautifully against the increasingly drunk and loquacious Brick, whom Flood now brings to appropriate life. There’s a gripping authenticity to the father-son scenes, which are beautifully timed and modulated. When linked up with the ensemble, O’Shaughnessy seems more comfortable, and is able to work the part with considerably greater force. Donna Dent makes a formidable Mae, the grasping, fertile sister-in-law, and Marion O’Dwyer eventually gets to ramp up the tension as Big Mama as the play reaches its stormy climax (assisted by Mark McCullough’s lighting and Denis Clohessy’s sound).

This is a good-looking but ultimately disappointing production. Francis O’Connor’s set and costumes create the setting for heat (again aided by McCullough’s lights), but it takes much too long for the show to take hold. This is a difficult play to manage precisely because of the intense demands it makes on the level of tone. Care and attention has been paid to the setting for Williams’ familiar combination of decay and excess. The set is decorated in baked and burned tones of light brown and beige, with a touch of peeled wallpaper marking the toll of time. Bathed in peach and sepia lights that give way to the ominous dark of the brewing storm, it all looks ready to be engulfed in flame, but the heat just isn’t there.

Dr. Harvey O'Brien lectures in Film Studies in University College Dublin and reviews theatre for culturevulture.net