Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama which premiered on Broadway in 1955. 

The play is set on a Mississippi estate where patriarch Big Daddy is unaware he is dying from cancer as the truth has been kept from him by his children. Maggie, the ‘cat’ of the title, has married into this wealthy family to escape the poverty of her childhood but finds herself neglected by her alcoholic husband Brick.

Following its 1955 premiere, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof was made into a film in 1958 starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.

This new production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof was staged on Broadway last year with an all-black cast including James Earl Jones as Big Daddy and Phylicia Rashad, who both recreate their performances in the West End. Jones is a Tony Award-winning stage actor who has starred frequently on Broadway and is also well known for his film career, Rashad’s Broadway credits include August: Osage County and A Raisin In The Sun, though she is still well known for playing Clair Huxtable in long running US comedy The Cosby Show.

The American duo is joined in the West End staging of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof by Laurence Olivier Award-winning actor Adrian Lester as Brick and Sanaa Lathan, who also appeared with Rashad in A Raisin In The Sun, as Maggie.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is directed by actor and director Debbie Allen, who, as an actor, starred in Fame before making the move into television directing for shows including The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. She directed several theatrical productions for the Kennedy Center before making her Broadway debut with Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is suitable for theatregoers aged 12 and over.

For more about Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Novello theatre, read the First Night Feature.