Major dysfunction takes place on the Roadrunner Theatre stage over the next few weeks.
Also, brilliance: Itâs Tennessee Williamsâ âCat on a Hot Tin Roof.â
The Pulitzer Prize-winning play was first staged in 1955, but it is ageless.
The story takes place at the familyâs rambling Mississippi estate.
Brick and his wife, Maggie, are holed up there. He is hobbled on cruthces: in an attempt to relive his high school glory days, broke an ankle trying a high jump.
Also at the estate are the patriarch, Big Daddy, and his wife, Big Mama, who live there. And Brickâs brother, Gooper, his wife, Mae, and their own gaggle of children, whom the childless Maggie calls âno-neck monsters.â
Big Daddy is dying of cancer, though the doctors have been lying to him and his wife about that.
The central tale follows the alcoholic Brick and Maggie. She is caught in a loveless marriage; Brick, who began drinking when his friend Skipper committed suicide, has no interest in sleeping with her â his love is for Skipper, and that is a serious source of fear and shame to him.
The play takes place over one evening, Big Daddyâs birthday. It is a night the family must face life, death, the past, the future and the lies that have informed their lives. Williamsâ play tackles greed, mendacity, social mores in the South and homophobia, which was rampant when the play was first staged.
Directing is Mark Klugheit, and the cast is led by Cynthia Jeffery, Roger Owen, Robert Anthony Peters and Sara Jackson. Performances are 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays Jan. 11-19 and Feb. 1-3 at Roadrunner, 8892 E. Tanque Verde Road. The cast moves over to the Cabaret Theatre at the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave., for performances at 7:30 p.m Jan. 24-26 and 2:30 p.m. Jan. 26-27.
Tickets are $20, with discounts available. It runs 2ÂŊ hours, with two intermissions.
For more information, head to roadrunnertheatrecompany.org/coahtr or call 207-2491.
