ACT’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Tim Gaskin

Michael James Reed plays Brick, the protagonist in American Conservatory Theater's 50th anniversary revival "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", the role Paul Newman made famous on the silver screen. Reed says the role of the alcoholic ex-football hero and the son of the ailing Big Daddy was one he was destined to play all his life, only sooner. Over the phone, he outs himself about being a new dad - our chat wakes his newborn - his age, and getting in shape to face discerning San Francisco gay audiences.

The sub story is that Reed has been auditioning for the role of Brick all his life. “It was a little intimidating. Here I am, maybe a little bit older than I was when I originally thought I was going to play this role.”

Reed divulges that just nine-weeks prior to the opening he was thirty-pounds overweight. He claims the results of his first six-months of parenthood which involved high quantities of ice cream and beer. Like any pro he joined a gym and hired a trainer.

Mendacity is the overall theme of the play. The patriarch in the family drama is dying of cancer. During the three hours that the play takes place; family members go from hiding that fact from him to revealing that fact to him and the consequences of living with lies. After the death of his “best friend” Skipper, Brick turns to booze for comfort and resists the affection of his wife Maggie.

Another test of the role is being an active-listener. “Events are happening to me,” He says. “For almost an hour in the first act, I have to sit there (in nothing but boxers) and listen to Maggie singing her aria.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof never reveals whether Brick is a gay and Reed’s character even denies the charge from the stage. And years after the 1974 final draft was complete, Tennessee Williams himself exposed Skipper as the homosexual and asserts that Brick was not.

“He was closer to that man than any other person in his life,” Reed responds. “Closer that he probably realizes himself.”

Reed says its Big Daddy open-mindedness who should be the favorite of the gay audiences especially when he declares, “There’s one thing easier to grow on this plantation than cotton and that’s tolerance. And I’ve grown it!”

It’s remarkable what Tennessee Williams was able to say with this play in 1955 says Reed. “His writing was testing and defining the boundaries of love and what it’s like being completely confused by that. That’s why Brick’s story is so tragic. Brick was beyond his own comprehension of his feelings. He was deeply in love with Skipper,” says Reed and then adds. “In another time, Brick and Skipper probably could have been and Brick could have let himself be gay.”

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, through Nov. 13. 415-749-2228 or www.act-sf.org