The current *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* is not the Scarlett Johansson Show, though she is the best thing about it, giving us a Margaret (as the playscript identifies her, though she's "Maggie" to just about everyone when she's not "Maggie the Cat") who is a Tennessee Williams heroine in all her majesty (and occasional absurdity): as tough-minded as Amanda Wingfield, as passionate as Stella DuBois Kowalski and as resilient as Alexandra del Lago. Johansson is a Maggie who knows where she comes from (and doesn't want to return there, understandably), who is sure of herself without being completely so and who, for all the abuse she takes from husband Brick (Benjamin Walker), is still very much in love with the man. As Big Daddy notes, there's "life in her" and Johansson makes it glorious.
The problem with the production, though, is that not everyone is up to her level. While Ciaran Hinds's Big Daddy is splendid (perhaps not as enormous and unforgettable as Burl Ives, but who is?) and Michael Park brings more depth to Gooper than you'd expect (almost as if hearing the story of the Prodigal Son from the perspective of the Prodigal's brother), Benjamin Walker's Brick remains all too true to the mystery Tennessee Williams thought the character should have: he seems to be struggling with the part almost as much as his character struggles with the now-I-have-it-now-I-don't crutch, and he never quite masters it. While Johansson is excellent throughout, Walker's Brick is excellent only in moments, most particularly in the long conversation with Big Daddy in Act II, where, though both men speak in circles, they come to some sort of understanding. Apart from that, it's rather hit-or-miss, though the problem does seem to be more Williams's than Walker's.
Without realizing it, Williams seems to have written not a study of a troubled marriage (the "review title" concludes the play as Brick reflects on how it would be funny if Margaret truly loved him, echoing Big Daddy's remark to Big Mama when she said that she loved him) or a portrait of a resilient heroine (though you can see it as that), but an examination of a dysfunctional family: though Big Daddy and Big Mama have two sons, they treat Gooper as an afterthought at best (and he's the eldest child!) and Big Mama at one point calls Brick her "only son"; Big Daddy in his Act II conversation with Brick can't speak of love for his younger son, but only of "fondness"; Mae (Emily Bergl) is a wife and mother (five and a sixth on the way!) who seems to know the price of everything and the value of nothing; her children, whom Margaret calls "no-neck monsters," may not actually be monsters, but they are certainly obnoxious. The Pollitts aren't a nice family, making you yearn for the happiness of Jack Straw and Peter Ochello, the plantation's original owners, who genuinely seemed to love each other...and to look more closely into Brick's friendship for the late Skipper, which, at its best, seemed to be the one true thing in Brick's life, until mendacity undermined it and finally destroyed it.
It's as an exploration of such a situation that I think *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* will ultimately endure, and it was how I most enjoyed this performance: folks reacting to a crisis and surprising us in the process (Big Mama asserting herself; Gooper revealing his hurt and his smarts; even Big Daddy wearing the gifts from his younger son and his wife at the end as he says his farewells). To be sure, Williams was after larger game, as we see in Margaret (especially in Act I) and with Brick and Big Daddy (in Act II), but he didn't quite bring it home. The declaration of the name of the (card) game at the end of *A Streetcar Named Desire* is here the answering of a question with a question, with the hint that nobody -- not actress, not actor, not playwright -- truly knows the proper response.
