I still vividly remember the night I first saw Thomas "Tennessee" Williams' The Glass Menagerie. The show concluded in a mother-daughter tableau so gorgeous, so inarguably perfect and right, that it sealed the deal on my adult fascination with theater. I'm not saying Williams makes it easy for directors. He seems, in fact, to beg overacting, cornpone accents, and shameless sentimentality. When everything clicks into place, though, he offers mythical weight that transcends mere reality.

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brick Pollitt, a football player turned career alcoholic, slogs through life in a quest for the sozzled acceptance he calls "the click." So it is with Williams' script, in which an arduous opening hour sets up a father-son confrontation in the second and inconclusive family meeting in the third. It seems to be named for Brick's sexually frustrated wife, "Maggie the cat," but the driver for this corrosive family dynamic is Brick's bellicose father, Big Daddy. In Harlequin's stately production, Aaron Lamb is entirely believable as a coddled son who's drinking himself into an early grave. Helen Harvester dances Maggie through Williams's elegant circles. Here's a character who never quite lands on a credible center, but what could any actor do about that?

I've seen plenty of solid work from Russ Holm in the past, but he locks into this powerhouse role of Big Daddy with an audible click. It's the character he was destined to play. Rachel Fitzgerald is equally good as Big Mama, the dutiful wife Big Daddy resents and despises. It's an unfortunate trait of Tennessee Williams that his characters, even lead characters, tend toward one-dimensionality, and that's certainly true of his lesser characters here. Despite that, Scott C. Brown and Maggie Lofquist pop from the background as Brick's marginalized older brother, Gooper, and an extravagantly pregnant sister-in-law, Mae.

Dissatisfied with Kazan's 1955 Broadway debut, Williams kept on tinkering with his script even after it won the Pulitzer Prize. This culminated in a 1974 American Shakespeare Theatre revival that afforded the script employed here, which explains a few R-rated adjectives.

The unit set looms over the proceedings like a guillotine, a full, fat moon shining through imposing marble columns and strands of Spanish moss. It was designed by Linda Whitney, whose direction here's in no particular hurry. That's not without justification, as the engine of the show doesn't appear till the second act, then disappears for all but a few minutes of the third. Elia Kazan had the same problem with Williams's play, so good luck solving that. A few awkward blocking choices aside, she's cast the show terrifically and elicited career-high performances from talented actors.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a show about lies. It weaves mendacities, then never quite tells us the truth. Perhaps that's its enduring allure.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through March 29, Harlequin Productions, 202 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia, $20-$31, 360.786.0151