Alec Mouhibian

The gut-spilled reactions to the new Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — the two recorded (so kindly) by Alec on this blog a few days ago — were both wrong. Watching it Wednesday night at the Broadhurst Theater, I felt like a cat out of Edgar Allan Poe, butchered and melted onto a tin roof so that the crime would be traceless.

James Earl Jones as Big Daddy satisfied the appropriate senses (and a few others), but the rest was torture. At one particularly that’s-what-she-said moment, a woman from the audience yelled out “Spitzer!” and Terrence Howard broke character and started cracking up. The audience, noticing this, cracked up even more, and back and forth it went. If it weren’t for Jones, whose voice boomed over the laughter, as if to order the audience to sober up and to install some terror into his co-star, the play might’ve ended right then.

Which wouldn’t be so bad at all, except for the one crucial scene we all would’ve missed: James Earl Jones bending his knees, pulling up his pants a bit, and humping the air again and again and again.

Garin:

I feel like a tin roof on a hot cat, fearing that,
if I collapse, I would squash the beauty that resideth
underneath.

Alec:

I feel like a tin cat on a hot roof, who,
with a lucky goof, will finally fall
and land on its feet.

Tom Wolfe:

MENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDASSUTAAAAAAYYYYYY!

(Read Terry Teachout’s review here.)