Furthermore, 'male lead' is perhaps overdoing it a bit. He has very little to say, with the play being dominated by the three females, with the first of the three acts being more or less a monologue by one of them.
But I get ahead of myself. The trains to London being in a bad state and the weather being in a good state, we settled on a train to Victoria, followed by a 38 bus to Piccadilly Circus, where we took our picnic on the steps of Eros, mainly in the company of young, foreign tourists. Slightly unsettled by the presence of a slightly odd young man with something very wrong with his hips and one of his legs; BH thought cerebral palsy. He was also drinking from a large bottle of cider and doing a bit of begging from likely prospects. Unsettled because while he had every bit as much right to be there as we did, we would have much preferred it if he had not been. If he were to live in some nice asylum, out of sight in the country, or failing that at least to beg from a less prominent perch.
Followed up with a quick visit to the Lyric, a visit giving rise to the google image search noticed at reference 1.
A good part of the matter of the play revolved about the drinking of the male lead. One aspect of which was that he kept telling us that he had to drink until, quite suddenly, something clicked in his brain, and all became quiet and peaceful. All the worries and troubles of the real world had receded into the background. Now while I can understand the desire to do such a thing and have been drunk often enough myself, I did not and do not recognise this business of clicking at all. Perhaps one has to be a proper alcoholic to be able to do that. Perhaps the playwright - Tennessee Williams - knew all about such matters. A playwright who, as it happened, was reported in the book noticed at reference 2, as having graced one or more of the literary occasions put on in New York for the benefit of Edith Sitwell.
One of the important bits of the story was not telling the patriarch - a one-time day labourer who made it to great wealth - the stuff of the dreams of the many poor people in the US - that he had bowel cancer, despite the fact that it was advanced enough for serious pain to be imminent. Not only was this, to my mind, bad clinical judgement but also most improbable. Such a man would expect to be told the truth and would be dominating enough that he would get his wish.
Another bit was the trashing of the younger brother, a boring lawyer with a pushy wife, working away to build his fortune. Williams does not seem to have much sympathy for him, which I thought was rather unfair. He might be dull, but he was a steady citizen, he was helping to keep the family business on course. He was doing his best to keep things together.
The patriarch messing about with his will struck a chord. The last bit of power of the old and infirm. One of the many ways in which we can get it wrong. A last bit of power which, as it happened, Osbert Sitwell's father made full use of, winding up in a rather silly place, leaving a nephew an Italian castle as a surprise, both for him and the chap who thought that he was getting it, but without the money needed to keep it up.
Splendid performance by the three lead ladies, with a special mention for Big Mama.
Too much use of variations of the phrase 'cat on a hot tin roof', which came to sound rather forced. In any case, a rather odd analogy, at least to the ears of someone who does not know of real heat, and does not particularly want to. How on earth do they manage in Kuwait where it is said to often reach 50C?
The cast made moderate use of their smoking rights, on this occasion mostly with substantial cigars.
All in all a rather improbably story, just like those of the bard, but it made for a powerful family drama. A good show.
Out to miss two 38 buses, so jumped into a taxi which, as it happened, delivered us to Victoria Station nicely in time for the next train to Epsom.
But we closed on a bad note. There have been several incidents of crime against property in our road this year, probably the work of bored and disaffected youth, so back at Epsom we were not too pleased to be told by our taxi driver of what sounded like fairly blatant, office hours theft of bicycles from outside the station by young visitors from Croydon, with one such theft blocked by the taxi driver himself. Although one's sympathy for the owners was moderated by the thought that they had left their cycles chained to the railings of the central reservation, rather than bothering to put them in the cycle racks provided behind the station. Cycle racks which are probably subject to a degree of supervision, if only by cameras.
PS: the cat in the snap turned up by google is said to be on a hot tin roof in Jerusalem.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/detective-work.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/facades.html.
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