Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Editorial

When: 10 September - 2 October 2011
Where: Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre of WA
Tickets: BOCS Ticketing

It's a long, sultry night under 'Big Daddy' Pollitt's plantation roof in 1950s Mississippi. The Delta's biggest cotton-planter and a very wealthy man, Big Daddy is dying, and the family vultures are hovering in the humid air, hungry for a slice of the inheritance pie.

Among those gathered at the plantation are the beautiful but needy Maggie, 'the Cat' who has escaped a childhood of grinding poverty by marrying into the Pollitt family. Maggie still burns hot for her handsome ex-footballer husband, Brick Pollitt, but since the recent death of Skipper, his best buddy, Brick has only had eyes for the bottom of a whisky bottle. As Brick and Maggie's troubled relationship comes to a stormy and steamy climax, a shockwave of secrets is revealed that will shake the Pollitt family to its foundations.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof premiered on Broadway in 1955, and was later made into a bowdlerized Hollywood film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, which Williams personally detested. Couched in the rich, earthy language of the Deep South, this uncompromising, intensely human portrait of a dysfunctional family shows why Tennessee Williams is still regarded as one of America's greatest playwrights.

Presented by Black Swan State Theatre Company & Queensland Theatre Company, through special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, you won't want to miss this passionate, magnificent and revealing work of theatre.

Richard Watts, Citysearch