Resonance of ‘Tin Roof’

Just in time to take the chill off winter evenings, Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” opens Wednesday for a four-night run at A Noise Within Theatre in Glendale.

The special engagement, directed by husband-and-wife team Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez Elliott, will be the first of several performances around the state by the theater company A Noise Within.

In this production, the Elliotts said they have tried to peel back the layers from the dark side of human nature to expose the characters’ core and vulnerability.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning play that debuted in 1955 is set in steamy Mississippi, where a rich and dying Big Daddy gets a birthday visit from his relatives, who wrap their greed, avarice and fears in not-so-opaque packages.

The classical theater company, which has been together for 10 years, uses its acting history as a base for understanding relationships, members said.

Rodriguez Elliott said she and her husband tried to be faithful to the playwright’s intentions and that their distinction comes in the actors’ delivery.

“The money-grubbing relatives could be portrayed as evil,” said Elliott, who co-directs and portrays Big Daddy’s son, Brick.

“But our characters are fully dimensional and are portrayed as contributing to the situation they are in. No one is good, no one is evil. They are all human.”

Brick is an ex-football star who neither wants to live nor has the courage to kill himself. So he does it slowly through liquor.

“There is something very touching about someone who wants to give up but is ultimately a survivor,” Elliott said.

“We’ve all had enough experience with vulnerability and pain to relate to what he goes through.”

Big Daddy is played by Mitchell Edmond and high-strung Maggie by Jennifer Erin Roberts.

Although many have seen the movie production starring Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor and Burl Ives, few know the play had been sanitized for the silver screen, Rodriguez Elliott said.

“There is a great deal more grit and life that didn’t make it to the screen,” she said.

“They were afraid to deal with the homosexuality issues; it was muted or skirted.”

Maureen Grady Reed, an actress who teaches playwriting at Mayfield Senior School in Pasadena, called the Elliotts’ production one of the most visceral she had ever seen.

“It got down to the bare bones,” she said.

“The emotional, raw material was unclouded. Usually I hate the character Big Daddy because he is so greedy, but Mitchell Edmonds was passionately alive. He made you love him.”

BE THERE

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Wednesday through Jan. 20 at 8 p.m. at A Noise Within Theatre, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. Tickets $40-16. Call (323) 953-7795.