Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Canberra Rep, Theatre 3

 I'll be honest upfront, this is not my favourite Tennessee Williams play. In the context of his works it lands around the point where his plays start to become semi-self-parodies, a mixture of southern sterotypes yelling around a grand mansion in a "who's going to inherit the estate" story that plays like a thinner version of Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes", also slightly distorted by Williams deciding that the first two acts should largely take the form of two of the most dynamic characters, Maggie and Big Daddy, having a conversation with the sullen, moody, undemonstrative Brick, with the third act carrying the weight of the actual plotting (and being the part of the play most likely to get rewritten, with about four different versions of Act 3 in circulation). 

Rep's production does reasonably solidly by the material, due to some strong casting decisions and a gorgeous Cate Clelland set design. Victoria Tyrell Dixon's Maggie is compelling, mercurial, rageful and able to handle the vast amounts of material Act one gives her, consistently fascinating and attention-drawing. Michael Sparks carries most of Act two on his back as the irritable patriarch, only slightly aware how little he's really connecting to his son as he continues to impart his opinions. Teig Saldana plays Brick as he is written, irate and compelled more by the desire for alcohol and his lost memories of greatness than anything he's actually in the room with, but he manages to handle the shifts in act three better than most versions I've seen, and keeps a character who I've found irritating in the past from completely losing me. Lanie Hart's Mae has a wig that does a lot of the performing for her, a contained, conniving bob that shows her small-town avaricious self, in a pristine white dress with a maternity bump, constantly assured she's the one who knows best. Ryan Erlandsen as her husband-and-partner-in-crime, the odious Gooper, has all the self-important pride the character needs. Liz St Clair Long as the hyper-emotional Big Mama rolls with every insult that Sparks throws her way, convinced her smothering-kind-of-love is secretly welcomed by everybody.

It's inherent in the writing here, but it never quite feels sensible that all these people would be rushing into the bedroom of Brick and Maggie to lay out cunning plots and schemes, but there's a strong blocking sense around the space giving characters space to do their manouvres without losing the connections between them. Cate Clelland's set gives us a gorgeous mansion bedroom, dominated at centre by the liquor cabinet where Brick is constantly drawn to just one more drink. 

In short, while this isn't a play I love, it's quite a solid production of it, showing it off to good advantage with a solid cast.

Wolf Lullaby, Echo Theatre, The Q

 Hilary Bell's 1996 play is probably still her masterpiece, a provocative confrontation about a 9 year old girl in a small town in Tasmania who's implicated in a murder investigation, and the effects this has on her parents and the cop investigating. Trapping the audience in with the cast of 4, we're forced to confront the disturbing nature of childhood games, the fears of parenting and the implications of justice, over a tight 90 minutes. 

Jordan Best last directed this play back in 2006 in a tightly controlled Street 2 production, and returns to the play with enthusiasm, letting her new cast find their own moments and emphases as the four find themselves sinking further and further into the darkness - the investigating cop whose professional manner starts to fall apart as he realises the implications of what he's finding, the mother who just wants to do the right thing, despite not quite knowing what that thing might be, the distant father who decides to double down on his distance, and the little girl whose night terrors may give indications of something else entirely None seek to play for sympathy - Rachel Pengilly's transformation into a 9 year old is astonishingly real as Lizzie is by turns inquisitive, playful, terrified and devious. Natasha Vickery's Angela takes over the weight of the second half of the play with strength as it becomes harder for her to balance her roles as a responsible person and a mother. Craig Alexander gives his cop an anchor of inherited authority only to lay out the cruellest moment in the last minutes of the play as he pushes Angela's buttons hard. Joel Harwood never plays for sympathy as the father whose disengagement becomes only more obvious as the story plays out, desperate to ignore what is in front of him. 

The other production elements - Chris Zuber's simple junkyard set, Jacob Aquilina's stark lighting, and Matthew Webster's chilling design - all add to the tension and draw us in further. 

A great provocative chiller on a February night, this is theatre that should not be missed - something to disturb the mind and the heart.

Beautiful Thing, New Theatre

 Johnathan Harvey's 1993 comedy does feel like it's every gay directors first play - or at least it's shown up on a lot of gay directors resumes since then. It's a gentle love story between two 15 year old boys on a South London housing estate, and given the gentle sense of humour and the working class background it plays slightly as a queer Willy Russell play. At the time it premiered it was already one of the gentler queer plays around - Angels in America was being put together in the same period, and Mark Ravenhill's far more confrontational "Shopping and F**king" was two years away, and at the time I admit I was looking for more of the raw rough-edged stuff rather than something this gentle.

But nearly 30 years on, it's time for me to catch up with a play I've missed from my canon. It's funny and sweet, a little messy here and there (it almost feels like Harvey isn't quite sure what to do with two of the straight characters, as he sends one off on a drug-fuelled trip and exiles another offstage), and it's clearly pushing the rougher edges of the love story offstage (the homophobic dad of Ste is only ever a voice offstage), but where it counts - the gentle arrival of a romance into the lives of two boys who weren't expecting it, and the impact on the people around them - it plays true and honest. 

In this production it gets a solid presentation - Will Manton as non-sporty Jamie and Bayley Prendergast as the more rough-and-tumble Ste have a natural chemistry and it's a delight to see them edging their way together in act one and working out what their relationship means in act two. Julia Kennedy Scott as Jamie's mum is a rough-edged delight, blunt and direct but with the heart in the right place. Hannah Zaslawski suffers a bit from the script's lack of clarity on why Leah's in the story - her function appears to be so that Jamie has someone to talk to before Ste comes along, but her goofy climactic appearance doesn't really work and feels more like a lot of dramatic noise covering up a lack of character development rather than a set of personality quirks. Caspar Hardaker has a character where the script isn't sure whether he should be mocked or taken seriously, and his performance falls on the side of mocking in ways that feel weird and make him a bit more superfluous than he should be. 

Some clever design decisions in David Marshall-Martin's set mean that scenes flow easily into one another, and the and the production feels coherent and sweet all round.

In short this is a reasonable production of a nice but not-entirely-essential play.