Edgar-Jones misses mark in Tennessee Williams classic

The star of 'Normal People' fails to achieve emotional lift-off in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' stage return, writes Alice Saville

- Alice Saville

Almeida Theatre, London

Tennessee Williams's landmark play opens with a long, drawnout howl of pain. Neglected, judged Maggie is clawing away at the family that won't let her in - the unloving alcoholic husband, the aggressively smug sister-in-law, the patriarch who looks dangerously close to denying her the inheritance she craves. Here, Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones is too poised to draw us into caring about this unlikeable woman, twisting her beautifully dressed body into contortions her face can’t manage. But as it builds, Rebecca Frecknall’s star-filled staging finds a queer kind of power.

Frecknall’s previous takes on Williams’s plays (Summer and Smoke and A Streetcar Named Desire) were much-praised masterpieces of female subjectivity and neuroticism, with Patsy Ferran’s agile, highly strung charisma shining bright on hazy, dimly lit stages. So Edgar-Jones’s performance as Maggie feels disappointingly thin by comparison, lacking the darkness, weirdness and jarring humour of a woman whose rants consume the first act.