The writing of Tennessee Williams is the poetry of characters who do not know they are speaking poetry. They grasp desperately at metaphors to express the emptiness at the centre of their lives because words just won't do. The exception is Brick: he sees this for what it is - "mendacity" - and drinks desperately to smother that same emptiness.
Directed by Ken Alexander, the cast at the Byre have an intuitive understanding of their characters' need for veneer, and he conducts the resulting poetry like chamber music. Anita Vettesse's Maggie opens the play chirruping something, anything, to pretend that her marriage to Richard Conlon's Brick hasn't fallen silent. When her tinkling phrases are punctured by Conlon's deadened bass, the vibrations are heart-breaking. Williams's characters work ever harder to paper over the cracks, which inevitably makes them more obvious.
The musical analogy extends throughout the production. A trumpet speaks the American South louder than a thousand words. But where music and language are usually the means of expression, here they have become the means of disguise. In the final scene, when the veils are lifted, Big Mama knows about Big Daddy's cancer and the family feuds have reached fever pitch, Brick switches on some jazz to cloak the daggers. This is the first production of this play I have seen where Brick's alcoholism seems the most adult response to the situation. And that is what makes the situation tragic.
As the dying patriarch Big Daddy, Gareth Thomas (better known as Blake from Blake's Seven) gives a terrific performance. He is all battered strength, a bruised hulk of a man like a ship under torpedo fire. His scene with Brick, a long talk in which neither of them say anything, is one of the most moving. Brick's anguish at the suggestion that he and his dead friend Skipper were more than just friends is pitched at just the right level, suggesting that he protests too much but leaving space for doubt. The revelation, when it comes, hits home like so much else in this polished production.
· Until November 23. Box office: 01334 476288.
