The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 18

18 THE GUARDIAN Friday February 5 1988 THEl REVIEW Michael Dillington relishes Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the National iRlllDlAIYI Neeme Jarvi has abruptly left the SNO to be succeeded by Bryden Thomson. Gerald Larner investigates the background i JPaosStmg IS IT better to shroud oneself in illusions or square up to reality? That is one of the great questions of modern drama. And Tennessee Williams offers us his variation on it in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof which gets its first London showing in 30 years at the Lyttelton in a superlative production by Howard Davies which sent Bravos coursing round the theatre. British directors and, actors, nurtured on native irony, currently seem to relish the frank emotionalism of American drama. Williams's play is certainly a fine one.

The second act.confrontation of Big Daddy and Brick has high emotional voltage. The play is also laced with that rich Southern humour that is Williams's trademark: I recall him in later years sitting at the back of theatres chuckling at his own portraits of human desperation. And yet, in a play originally banned in Britain because of its homosexual allusions, I find a strange vagueness about the exact nature of the hero's sexuality. Brick is an ex-football star who has retreated into alcoholism and moral para lysis since the death of his friend Skipper. He is clearly crippled by guilt he hung up on his friend in his darkest hour and by doubts about his own sexual identity.

Big Daddy, whose estate the family is fighting for, sees this. So too does Brick's wife Maggie. But having raised delicate questions about what lies behind the facade of American virility and male bonding, Williams abruptly terminates the discussion. Given the theatrical conventions of the the sheen of rapacity, to Barbara Leigh-Hunt's Big Mama swathed in a voluminous silvery dress that proclaims the rustle of money every time she moves. But it is on the central trio that the play's emotional impact securely rests.

Eric Porter, too long absent from our theatre, might seem unusual casting for Big Daddy in that his forte is intellectual gravity. But, bulky in white linen and with flowing patriarchal locks, he exudes both crude materialism and the residual tolerance of the worldly-wise: it is Porter's sudden gleam of compassion for Brick's plight that actually makes this a moving performance. Ian Charleson as Brick spends much of the evening hobbling over to the liquor cabinet on crutches; but the success of the performance is that Mr Charleson suggests both the crew-cut jock and the tormented soul within. And Lindsay Duncan's Maggie is a triumphant mixture of sexual wit and smouldering defiance, not least in the way she angles her head when she announces her pregnancy as if to defy her husband or anyone else to say her nay. Possibly William Dudley's Mississippi plantation-house suite is a little too cream-ily new and seductive for a room Williams describes as "Victorian with a touch of the Far East." But the constant reminder of the pale moon and tropical trees gives the house a context and epitomises the way nature mocks the -mendacity, greed and hypocrisy that Williams so scathingly portrays.

Fifties, you could hardly expect Williams to be more explicit. My point is that the play.as it stands, does not quite add up. Everything Williams puts on stage including Brick's hysterical horror at the idea of sodomy implies that his hero is living a lie: that he is fundamentally homosexual. But Williams always denied this in interviews and finally shows Brick lured back into Maggie's bed with the dear hint that they will successfully procreate. As a conclusion it may square with Broadway expectations but it undercuts the debate about lies and illusions.

Where Williams is terrific is not as people think in his handling of sex but in his portrayal of social attitudes. And in the final act Williams gives a lethal portrait of the vindictive cruelty of American family life as Brick's elder brother, Gooper, and his wife, Mae, move in for the kill brandishing a provisional will under their mother'snose. Williams is not only the poet of frustration. He is also a social satirist who sees through the great American illusion that posssessions can protect you against reality. Howard Davies, a director expert at linking private and public worlds, brings this out beautifully.

Everything in this production seems right from the choreographed display put on by Mae's ingratiating brood to entertain Big Daddy to the shy evasions of Colin Jeavons's cleric who can talk only about memorial windows in a house haunted by death. Every role is precisely inhabited from Paul Jesson's Gooper, whose spectacled features have amount to well over 100,900 or possibly even 200,000, which cannot be very encouraging for anyone living in North America and seeing orchestras go into liquidation all round them. It must be emphasise! that no such thing is at all likely to happen to the SNO, but there is ho doubt that the new general administrator is going to nave a tough time. The amazing thing is that the new principal conductor has already been appointed, although his name has not officially been released. In many ways Bryden Thomson is an obvious choice.

Although, apparently, he can be difficult to work with, he is a good musician and an accomplished conductor. Born in Ayr 60 years ago, he is also a Scot. Smouldering: Lindsay Duncan. Picture by Douglas Jeffery NEEME JARVTS relationship with the Scottish National Orchestra was always too good to be true. In 1984, when the orchestra had almost expired with boredom in the declining last years of its quarter of a century with Sir Alexander Gibson, Jarvi injected a life-saving dose of adrenalin.

Indeed, within four years he had transformed the repertoire, conducted some remarkably successful commercial recordings, and excited the public in Glasgow and Edinburgh in much the same way as Simon Rattle has done in Birmingham. On the other hand, there was no real reason why a brilliant and ambitious Estonian, an ex-Soviet American citizen with a home in New Jersey and another orchestra in Gothenburg, should retain more than temporary ties in Scotland. Indeed, he took little interest in Scottish or even British music and little notice of the taste of the audience. The miracle is that, far from being alienated by his promotion of obscure Scandinavian composers and unfashionable Russians, both the orchestra and the public went along with him. But why should he choose to go just now, in mid-season? The official explanation is that he has resigned his post as principal conductor "for personal Certainly, one can imagine that he would like to travel less and see more of his family.

But the fact is that Jarvi had only recently signed a contract that would in theory have retained his services with the SNO until the end of 1990, Glasgow's year as cultural capital of Europe. Inevitably, and sadly, this resignation has to be linked with the equally sudden departure Stephen Carpenter, the SNO's general adminstrator, at the end of last year. His predecessor, Fiona Grant, had left Glasgow in 1985 having eased Sir Alexander Gibson into his honorary presidentship, having engineered the appointment of Neeme Jarvi, and having made sure that there would be no financial deficit to pass on to her successor. Within months of her leaving for London, however, a deficit was beginning to accumulate. When Carpenter, a young and Electronic I I ECONOMETER Five SEATBELTSX Neerm-Jarui ce Ui WHATEVER YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WANT FROM A HATCHBACK YOU'LL FIND IT IN A SAMARA.

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There is no reason why swift action should not work out well in the long term. For Bryden Thomson, who has male his round of the regional BBC orchestras, this could be just the inspiration he needs. oTAICAf DRAWN BY THE HIGHLY ATT AC- 3 TIVE SHAPE, WHICH PRODUCES A LOW DRAG FACTOR OF 0.36 AND ITS FAIR SHARE OF relatively inexperienced aimunstrator. resigned an wnat ADMIRING is a difficult time for every British orchestra) the deficit was approaching alarming proportions. -I a.

oe Tne actual amount nas not been disclosed but it must MANCHESTERRadio 3 Gerald Larner aj 3J BBC PO Downes well varied in itself and David Wilde found a remarkably lucid radiance and linear liquidity' in the textural and rhythmic complexities. He ne-ver once allowed the technical problems to come between himself and Sir Michael in what was a particularly happy example of a soloist and conductor relationship. Debussy's Jeux was well done too not in any conciously poetic or soft-fo-cussed impressionistic kind of way but in finely detailed and carefully nuanced clarity, particularly appropriate to this faintly cynical and at the same time highly adventurous score. TIPPETT'S PIANO Concerto, his Second Symphony. De bussy's one of them is a major challenge to an orchestra and Quite big enough in itself to make something Q- Of course you'll expect reliability, so beneath THE BONNET OF EVERY MODEL THERE'S A BRAND NEW 1288CC.0HC TRANSVERSELY MOUNTED ENGINE THAT'S GOOD Uj FOR 9,000 MILES BETWEEN SERVICES.

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