Lust, Alcoholism, Greed... It's All In The Family

Think your family’s messed-up? Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” a timeless story about a wealthy plantation family who gather to celebrate the birthday of their patriarch and compete for inheritance rights, will put your clan to shame at the Loeb Experimental Theatre, starting tonight. The Roving Reporter sat down with the cast to rake through the Southern underbelly of the production.



Benjamin T. Clark ’09

RR: So who do you play?

BC: I play Big Daddy.

RR: Does the Adam Sandler film “Big Daddy” give you any inspiration for your role?

BC: Well, I have been peeing on a lot of walls. And I’m always waiting for Jon Stewart to show up randomly.

RR: Have any of your birthdays been as bad as Big Daddy’s in the play?

BC: Well, I’ve never gotten cancer and had my entire family lie to me.

RR: Right, your character is lied to about his health by everyone in the play. Have you ever felt that everyone around you is lying to you?

BC: Well, I’ll let you know—this is my first time acting and everyone told me it was easy.

RR: If you’ve had no experience acting, how did you get cast?

BC: That is a very good question. They were looking for a giant bigot and couldn’t find anyone else. And I have a terrible southern accent. I’m from North Jersey. But in South Jersey people actually do have accents, those Pineys. That was all the research I needed to do.



David J. Smolinsky ’11

RR: Tell me about your character.

DS: Well, Brick is a drunken ex-football player/announcer. He’s sexually confused. His wife thinks that he was in love with his friend. It seems like he loved neither of them and he’s just unhappy, but he is his dad’s favorite.

RR: Do you perform drunk?

DS: A little bit. Towards the end.

RR: Has this role made you sexually confused?

DS: No, that was the hardest thing to do actually.

RR: Harder than the southern accent?

DS: Yeah, and I’m from Long Island.

RR: So I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the play and found this quote: “The only thing Brick can carry is a football and a highball.” Which one are you better at carrying?

DS: A highball, definitely. But I don’t even know if that line’s in the play, maybe it is. You know, I only care about my own lines and don’t really listen to anyone else—just the last words.



Olivia A. Benowitz ’09

RR: Who do you play in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?”

OB: I play Mae.

RR: Who is Mae? Tell me a little about her.

OB: Mae is the sister-in-law of Brick and Maggie, who are the two main characters. She was Cotton Carnival Queen in high school. She has five kids. She has a sixth on the way and is very proud of her children and thinks that she deserves all of the attention and all of the inheritance.

RR: So you have kind of a feud with Maggie [played by Allison H. Rich ’09], another character. How does that relate to real life?

OB: Ah, yes. Allison and I. We’ve known each other since freshman year and we’re constantly fighting over who gets to, y’know, get the privileges in our house: Who gets to go first in the dining hall line, who gets to get the waffle machine first, all of that.

RR: A lot of this story has to do with a dysfunctional family. Do you have any good dysfunctional family stories?

OB: Well, my father was arrested for indecent exposure before I was born. I suppose that’s dysfunctional. My mother wasn’t too keen on that.



Allegra M. Richards ’09 & Nathan D. Johnson '09

RR: So what are your roles in the production?

AR: We’re the directors.

RR: What inspired you to direct this show?

NJ: Well, I think it started when Allegra and I saw “Cats” and then we thought what if “Cats” was staged on hot metal?

AR: If we hadn’t done “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” we briefly considered doing “Kittens on Hot Metal,” which would have been the rated R version.

RR: Tennessee Williams is said to have hated the 1958 film version of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” How much would he hate your version?

NJ: I’d say probably even more because we told every actor to model themselves after Elizabeth Taylor.

RR: If you could be named after a state, like Tennessee, what would you choose?

AR: Alaska, because recently I was told that I was cold as ice.

NJ: Idaho. I-da-ho.

RR: In the play, basically the entire cast is lying to Big Daddy about his health. What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?

NJ: That I directed “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

AR: That I like working with Nathan.