By Karu F. Daniels, BlackVoices.com



After a few weeks of previews, the all-black version of Tennessee Williams' classic play 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' officially opened March 6 at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre.

Starring Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard, along with Tony Award winners James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad and Anika Noni Rose, the Debbie Allen-directed revival is all the buzz on The Great White Way.

And it's selling like hotcakes, to quote the show's spokesman Joe Trentacosta.

First night audience patrons included black Hollywood power brokers Suzanne de Passe, Berry Gordy, Marcus King, Butch Lewis and Benny Medina juxtaposed with revered entertainment veterans such as Morgan Freeman, Cicely Tyson, Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte, Lynn Whitfield, Sylvia Rhone and Spike Lee.

Baseball legend Hank Aaron, best-selling black media maven Terrie Williams, and white-hot actor Jeremy Piven were also in the mix, along with Broadway beauties Tonya Pinkins, Brenda Braxton, Capathia Jenkins, Judine Richards, Sarah Jones and Elisabeth Withers-Mendes.

The mostly over-50 year-old crowd (photos below) crammed into the densely built theater to take in the anticipated work, helmed by producer Stephen Byrd, a former Wall Street executive who's making his maiden voyage into the theater world with the ambitious show.

Today, the mainstream critics weighed in on the colorful version of 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' which also stars Lisa Arrindell Anderson, Lou Myers, Count Stovall and Giancarlo Esposito.
In a New York Times review, Rose (whose Broadway roots include the musicals 'Footloose' and 'Caroline, or Change,' and a supporting role in the movie 'Dreamgirls') garnered much props: "As it turns out, Ms. Rose more than holds her own," revered theater critic Ben Brantley wrote on March 7. "She pretty much runs the show whenever she's onstage, and when she's not, the show misses her management."

"It's such a succulent slice of Southern strife that color-blindness sets in almost immediately, and it becomes another round of Everyfamily dysfunction, if more creatively crafted than most," Playbill's Harry Haun said about the non-traditional production, noting that this is the fifth Broadway coming of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award play.

"While Debbie Allen's inexperience as a director shows in pedestrian physical staging with a tendency toward heavy-handedness, she lucks out where it most matters -- with her powerhouse cast," Variety magazine critic David Rooney observed.

In a two and a half star review, USA Today critic Elysa Gardner gave Allen her props for "giving 'Cat' another life," and also referred to scripts as "if a gust of fresh, salty air came pouring into an overly perfumed boudoir."

Meanwhile, the New York Daily News critic Joe Dziemianowicz called the show "uneven" but raved about Jones: "[He] gives such a thundering and throbbing performance as dying Big Daddy that you feel it in your bones." And the New York Post offered up three stars with the legendary Clive Barnes concluding his review with: "I've seen smoother stagings of the play, but this one is well worth seeing."

It is, indeed, worth seeing.

With mainstream media critics and their critiquing or not, the color green is what's really king when it comes to blacks on The Great White Way.

As a matter of fact, the all-new, all-black version of 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' is doing so well that it has already been extended from its "strictly limited run" (as noted on the marquee) and will play throughout Tony Awards season.

As previously reported by The BV Newswire, 'Soul Food' heartthrob Boris Kodjoe will step in for Howard in the lead role of Brick next month. The 'Hustle and Flow' actor will start a six week hiatus starting April 15 to promote his new film 'Iron Man.'

According to Trentacosta, Howard will return to the role May 6.

There's also buzz that rap music superstar LL Cool J may step in thereafter during the early summer months.

"Coast-to-coast the buzz on 'Cat' is amazing," gushed Gwendolyn Quinn of GQ Media & Public Relations and Founder of The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC), who attended opening. "[This] is another demonstration on how theater featuring an African American cast can be promoted and marketed to the urban mainstream audience and beyond."

"Stephen Byrd has brilliantly built a successful production without the traditional Broadway marketing vehicles," she added. "With the success of 'Cat' and 'The Color Purple,' along with the August Wilson brand, the opportunities exist for African Americans to participate and experience more theater on the Great White Way."

With Godspeed.