Phylicia Rashad on Unleashing Cat in the West End

We expect British actors to go to Broadway, as they so often do, but what’s been gratifying lately is the number of American performers that have found their way to London. The Steppenwolf cast of August: Osage County garnered raves last season at the National Theatre, and this year has seen the U.K. stage debut of Broadway’s last Violet Weston, Tony winner Phylicia Rashad, this time inhabiting an altogether different southern clan—that of Tennessee Williams’ plantation-owning Pollitts. The New York stage veteran has crossed the pond in her sister Debbie Allen’s all-black revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, joining James Earl Jones’ Big Daddy to play a Big Mama possessed of equal measures panic, determination, and an abundantly aching heart. Broadway.com caught up with Rashad early one evening in her dressing room at the Novello Theatre, where she greeted a visitor in her robe, busily pinning up her hair up for that night’s performance. All the while, she chatted about Williams, Wilson and other cornerstones of a career that is still very much in its prime.

Here you are revisiting this play, albeit with an almost entirely different cast and design team but with James Earl Jones and your sister still on board. Did you think, “I can’t wait to do it again”?
I didn’t think, “I can’t wait to do it again.” I thought being in London would be fun and, of course, you know it’s every young actor-in-training’s dream to come to London. This and Greece are the seats [of drama], so now I have to go to Greece!

How well did you know London already?
I was here many years ago when my daughter [Condola Rashad] was an infant and my other children were pre-adolescent or adolescent, and we just had the best time. And sometimes, on trips to India, I would book the flight in such a way that I would come into London in the morning, de-board the plane, come into the city and then go back to the airport at the end of the day and re-board the flight so as to arrive in India the next morning. That had been my experience of London, and I liked it. This experience has made me actually adore it. I like the people, and I like the English countryside – Southampton and Winchester and when all is said and done, I’m going to go to Glastonbury and I want to go to Edinburgh and Oxford. I’m going to have to start putting my ducks in a row and getting up early and doing these things during the week.

So this was a bit of a no-brainer.
These things are always fun to do: it’s fun to work with good actors, and this is a very good company. And working with James Earl—can we talk about dreams come true? I have to say, I am the luckiest duck. I have worked with the greatest men, really the greatest: Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Anthony Chisholm. Many years ago [in 1972] James Earl cast me as an understudy in a Public Theater production of The Cherry Orchard that he was putting together. I understudied Anya but never went on. I was a peasant in the background, and it was all good.

What would you say is the biggest change between this Cat and the version you previously did on Broadway?
My dress in New York was bluer [laughs]. This production is clearer because things become clearer when you work on them. The set is greatly improved, and I think Deborah [her sister, director Debbie Allen] was able to come back and refine her work, and if she did it again she would find more refinement because that’s what people do as artists: we come back and refine and refine all the time.

I love the exit moment in the third act where Big Daddy reaches behind him for Big Mama’s hand—after all the abuse he has piled upon her, what nonetheless remains is love.
Jimmy wanted to do that, and it’s beautiful, really beautiful. You have to understand some things about southern women in the 1950s, and I know about this, even though we’ve placed the play in the 1980s. Big Mama is not an educated woman; she’s not a developed woman. She could have been but her main goal in life is to be important to her husband, without whom she doesn’t have a life. So when the husband is the central figure, child bearing and all that stuff becomes very, very important, along with keeping the most beautiful house, keeping yourself exciting, working it out in bed, serving good meals, making sure this birthday party was the best. She’s not an educated woman, but Big Mama is not stupid.

How did you first end up in the Broadway production?
There was another director involved, and I was called and asked to do the role and then there was a change in direction and Deborah was brought to direct and it was a bit of a dilemma because of timing. I had committed already to the August Wilson festival at the Kennedy Center that I was really looking forward to and I regretted not doing it because August Wilson and his works mean so much to me. [Gem of the Ocean] was the first time a script woke me up in the middle of the night, and, back then, to have August Wilson in the room? That was my greatest theatrical experience ever. August Wilson—there was something else in him. I’ve experienced some great playwriting, worked with some very good playwrights, but that something else is a rare thing.

What persuaded you then to opt for Cat?
My sister was directing this play, and she told me if I didn’t do it, she was going to call mama. And my mother would have been very annoyed.

Did you worry it might be too close for comfort? Would Debbie call you “sis” during rehearsals?
She called me Phylicia, or “Lish.” I didn’t think, “I don’t want to be directed by my sister.” We’d done a couple of films together, though never anything on stage. The thing is, Deborah and I are trained in the same school. I don’t mean the same physical school [Howard University], but we come from the same background, and we share that. Still, we don’t always see things the same way, so sometimes we have to work it out, and I have to be willing to listen and trust what she’s saying—as I have to be with any director.

It must be wonderful to be able to offer this play to a British audience.
Sure, and I think the British audience enjoys it. I’ve found the British audience very open—and vocal. Sometimes, I think I’m in Parliament. [Laughs.] Somebody on stage says something, and suddenly it’s, "Ooooh, ahhhh, ooooh, that’s not right!" That sounds like the people in Parliament.

Any thoughts of becoming a politician, as many actors have?
Oh no, thank you. They’re having too many problems, honey. I don’t think I’d do well in politics because I’m very outspoken when it comes to the truth and what people need. I think they wouldn’t like me very much. I would tell them right away, “Look, what’s all this double talk about? Why are you making it so difficult? Why are you trying to polarize people?” See, I would talk like that and they wouldn’t like me.

And it’s not as if you haven’t found satisfaction in art.
Oh, yeah. The only thing that matters to me is finding the heart of the character. That’s what we’re here to do. The important thing is to find the heart.