Directed by Jordan Best for Free Rain Theatre Company, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of American playwright Tennessee Williams’s best-known works. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955, has been restaged several times since, and was adapted into an acclaimed 1958 motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman
It’s the story of a Southern family in crisis, focusing on the turbulent relationship of a wife and husband, Maggie ‘The Cat’ (Jenna Roberts) and Brick Pollitt (Alexander Marks) and their interaction with Brick’s family over the course of one evening gathering at the family estate in Mississippi, ostensibly to celebrate the birthday of patriarch and tycoon ‘Big Daddy’ Pollitt (Tony Turner). Liz Bradley is Big Mumma, Cameron Thomas is Gooper and Michelle Cooper is May—this is an all-star cast in arguably one of the great American plays.
Maggie, though witty and beautiful, has escaped a childhood of desperate poverty to marry into the wealthy Pollitt family, but finds herself suffering in an unfulfilling marriage. Brick, an aging football hero, has neglected his wife and further infuriates her by ignoring his brother’s attempts to gain control of the family fortune. The recent suicide of Brick’s friend Skipper seems to be the catalyst for his indifference and heavy drinking.
Big Daddy is unaware that he has cancer and will not live to see another birthday; his doctors and his family have conspired to keep this information from him and his wife. His relatives are in attendance and attempt to present themselves in the best possible light, hoping to receive the definitive share of Big Daddy’s enormous wealth. Oy, what a drama!
WHAT: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
WHERE: Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre
WHEN: 30 October – 14 November
TICKETS: $18 – $28
BOOKINGS: 62752700
