No one happy in that play: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Last night we saw the Guthrie Theater's production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  It is an admirable production with a fine set, period costumes, excellent acting.  Having come from class discussion of notions of happiness I watched wondering what I might learn about happiness from Williams' portrayal of the evening of "Big Daddy's" 65th birthday, a story of a family in the American south in the 1950s. 

The most obvious thing I noticed: no one was happy in this play.  That is not to say that some characters did not attempt to appear to be happy: Big Mama and Mae might fit this role.  Everyone else in the family displayed their misery nearly without wavering.  Maybe Maggie played a bit at false happiness, but like her sister-in-law, she did it in anticipation of winning the inheritance that promised prosperity.  However, a simple equation of happiness with prosperity is undercut by the obvious fact that the man from whom they hope to win an inheritance, their father-in-law, may be the owner of the property with adequate resources for a European vacation, but he is not happy.  Neither has he been happy in the past.

He is the one who names the odor that prevents happiness: mendacity.  That is: lies, pretense, hypocrisy,  pretending to be what one is not.  Ah, the viewer thinks, here is a new insight.  Happiness depends upon honesty and truth.  That might be the case except that Brink's devotion to "Echo Park" whiskey is in some complex way the result of his either facing the truth about his friendship with Skipper or refusing to face it.  Then Big Mama's illusion that she has been happy in the past is shattered by Big Daddy speaking the truth to her perkiness.  Perhaps Big Daddy's rejection of mendacity it is merely another way of suggesting that the key to being happy is to accept one's circumstances and be content with the blessings of the day.   He has a round of this when, believing the lies he has been told, he thinks that he is not dying and prepares to embrace the pleasures of the day.  But that doesn't quite work either, since this seems less like contentment than frantic pursuit of unrestrained pleasure.  And then the charge of mendacity is repeated with reference to his being told lies about how sick he is.  Certainly Williams was not suggesting that the key to happiness is being willing to die?

I suppose that Williams did not sit down to write a play about happiness in the mid-20th century American south or even about the unhappiness of this family.  Nonetheless, questions about happiness and its absence or its opposite help me hear something more than screaming.