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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
September 1st 1958
by Signet
(first published 1955)
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Having seen (and forgotten, as it often happens after a certain age :D) the film many years ago, I sort of knew the plot, but I was nonetheless rewarded with a great deal of domestic drama. I especially enjoyed the first two acts: the confrontation between Maggie and Brick (Act I) with their marriage on the rocks - excellent double meaning btw, (see Brick's alcohol problems) and the confrontation between Big Daddy and Brick (Act II), the climax, which reveals that mendacity is the system that go...more
I have seen the film version of this play with Paul Newmann and Elizabeth Taylor as the main characters and it is truly one of my all time favorites. Of course, this is why I wanted to read the play. Apparently, (as per the editors notes in the book) Williams did approve several different changes in his play for some stage productions and the film production. I will say that I believe I enjoyed reading this play having already seen it as, of course, there is not much more than simple dialouge t...more
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It's been too long since I read a play. There's something so pleasantly dramatic (pardon the pun) and exaggerated about the way the dialogue feels to a solitary reader. I liked these characters (well, at least, the ones I was meant to like) very much and am looking forward to watching the Paul Newman film soon.
I couldn't help thinking that Mr. Williams ought to have written this as a novella rather than a play. His stage directions are very long and detailed and he has a lot of "...more
I couldn't help thinking that Mr. Williams ought to have written this as a novella rather than a play. His stage directions are very long and detailed and he has a lot of "...more
The second of a pair of Williams plays I read recently. "Cat" takes place in the bed/sitting room of Brick and Maggie Pollitt in the plantation home of "Big Daddy" Pollitt, Brick's father. Big Daddy is a rich man, owner of a huge plantation; the occasion that takes place in the play is the celebration of Big Daddy's birthday and his (supposed) clean bill of health from recent medical tests. All the family members (except Big Daddy and his wife, Big Mama) know that the medical...more
I loved this play as a teenager -- the feverish pace, the soaring poetry of the big speeches, the way Big Daddy was everything my father wasn't and the way Maggie keeps sighing over Brick. But after thirty years of living, I just don't read this play in the same way. There are so many things I swallowed whole as a teen that seem laughably far-fetched as an adult.
Brick is a thirty year old man. Not a fifteen year old boy. Yet he still doesn't know if he's gay or straight? I mean, com...more
Brick is a thirty year old man. Not a fifteen year old boy. Yet he still doesn't know if he's gay or straight? I mean, com...more
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If there is a problem in a marriage it is right here" big mamma says while pointing at a bed. That is just what this play is about; a problemd marriage between a drunken husband and a wife despertly seeking his love.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof involves a lot of screaming, airy Southern talking, and weak and useless characters. I couldn't find a point in the play, and there is no moral to speak of unless it aims to convert a moneybag grubber into a Christian saint. The pages just keep...more
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof involves a lot of screaming, airy Southern talking, and weak and useless characters. I couldn't find a point in the play, and there is no moral to speak of unless it aims to convert a moneybag grubber into a Christian saint. The pages just keep...more
My book group discussed this play yesterday afternoon. I read the play, both endings and then viewed the film with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Neumann. When the play was originally produced on Broadway, the director Elia Kazan asked Williams to rewrite the ending so that Big Daddy would appear in the last act. A good friend of mine thinks that the rewritten ending does not permit the characters to reamin true to themselves; I like the second ending and prefer the film version with Big Daddy'...more
I had only seen the movie several times because I worship Paul Newman. Always have and always will. That said, I did not know about the homosexual undertone of the play... because the movie makers chickened out and turned the whole admiration between Brick and Skipper upside down. There is no mention of the 'old bachelors' from whom Big Daddy inherited the plantation. There is no hint at homosexuality in the play, maybe once in an ironic smile of Big Daddy. And in the film Brick actually desires...more
The version I just finished is the most recent version that Williams himself put the finishing touches on. Since Williams was someone who constantly went back over his plays and added and took things away from them, this version is starkly different than what you would see in the film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Though the film is very good, this version of the play tells the whole story and leaves nothing to the imagination. It's so much better than the movie because all the ques...more
I read and enjoyed Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, so I figured I might as well read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as well. I love the film versions of these plays, and it's what made me want to go read the original works on which they're based.
The play takes place over the course of one evening, Big Daddy's 65th birthday celebration. His family gathers at the plantation to celebrate his birthday and his not having cancer (even though he really does, but is initially led to be...more
The play takes place over the course of one evening, Big Daddy's 65th birthday celebration. His family gathers at the plantation to celebrate his birthday and his not having cancer (even though he really does, but is initially led to be...more
There must be a price to pay for honesty. This "cat" says what she wants to say no matter how much this may hurt her family. She admits she's an opportunist and thats how one should live in a postmodern life as this play took place. Money and wealth are tools how she and other characters can survive in the "hot tin roof" and society in larger extant. Pride and prestige are goals the characters aim to shoot at. Lies and flattery are ways to achieve the goals and set all dreams...more
Excellent play - remarkable given the time when it was written, the historical set-up which it had to confront. I liked Maggie (Margaret Pollitt) and Brick - Big Daddy's character, too, rich in emotions, full of colour and substance. I also found that the final text for the stage (directed by Elia Kazan; and which opened at the Morosco Theater on Broadway on March 24, 1955 - with Barbara Bel Geddes playing Maggie, Ben Gazzara playing Brick and Burl Ives as Big Daddy) offers some additional indic...more
This one came as a letdown for me - I did not think it was as good as the previous Williams plays I've read such as Streetcar. Brick is a tough character to warm too, he is the "honest" soul of the play, but he is as inactive (literally because of his broken ankle and figuratively as well) as Hamlet. This is deliberate, but it does take some of the air out of the drama. In order for the play to be internally consistent with its characters, we can't have Brick all of a sudden jump out o...more
I had to read this for a class and I had never read anything by Tennessee Williams before, nor have I seen any productions/film adaptations of his plays (not that I can think of anyway). However, I really enjoyed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and trying to imagine Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman as the two main characters was very easy. The dialogue is well-written and flows seamlessly; I loved how Williams writes how the southern accent should sound because it made it so much easier to imagine how i...more
Tennessee Williams excelled in capturing the essence of the South in this masterpiece. When I finished reading this play I delighted in reflecting upon it's many great themes: greed, marriage, death, superficiality, and sexuality. I praise Williams for his success in capturing the essence of each character's personality through their dialogue, also authentically capturing the region they inhabit with their accent. For example, we know Brick is a more introverted character by his short replies, w...more
I read this as part of a literature course and I'm a bit on the fence about it. It didn't really make me feel any particular way in terms of its plot. You could definitely identify themes running through it such as greed but the plot was a bit static and not what I prefer in a play. The characters, I thought were very well conceived and without ever having seen this play performed I could imagine how they would be and how they would move on the stage. One thing that stilted my reading of it thou...more
Really very interesting to read a play that I've heard so much about. The complexity of the work is impressive, and even though I read it out aloud, I think I missed a lot of the more complex parts. I really liked Maggie. I felt like she was the most sympathetic character in the play, with the exception of Big Mama. She feels so frustrated in her life and her intentions for it. It seems that the only way she can reach any of the goals she had is by clawing for them, as Maggie the cat, the w...more
I love Tennessee William. Let me put that out there. I appreciate his use of symbolism and Southern Gothic style. I like the way his plays are simultaneously character and plot driven, with the characters' personalities progressing the plot lines to create an effect. However, I found the character progressions too vague in this play, and I was disappointed, because I really wanted to learn more about Maggie and Brick. I found Maggie especially strong, with her determined mind and her coy use of ...more
The family tension in this play was incredibly palpable and the dialogue was quite good. However, the foul language and much of the theme content was so awful that I couldn't enjoy reading it. (It was required for class or I probably would have stopped after the first 20 pages.) There were some very poignant exchanges that revealed how hard it is to communicate when there is so much being left unsaid. We later had to attend a local production of the play for class and the cast did a terrific ...more
What a play! Some plays are boring to read, but this one flows with energy and poetry. Superb!
Tennessee Williams may have seen through the bs veneer of post World War 2 America better than any other author. The play, despite taking place in real time and consisting of no action outside of the bedroom, races forward with a sense of emotional urgency. Brick is a strong central character. The friendship (or more) between Brick and his best friend that drives him to be in constant search of the "click" (yes, that is the reference in the National song) prods at social taboos that...more
I hope to see this play one day, I really enjoyed it. I felt for Maggie (being the cat) She wants nothing more in the world than to win back her husband's affection. She also is hell bent on her husband Brick inheriting his father’s property when he dies instead of her brother and sister in-law Mae and Gooper . Maggie grew up poor and does not want to grow old in the same condition. The problem is that her husband has lots all interest b/c he is a self-loathing drunk. Maggie fights as hard as sh...more
I absolutely adore Tennessee Williams. One of the few playwrights whose work can be read so easily and fluently on the page. Recommended for anyone who likes their plays full of atmosphere, tension and drenched with old Hollywood glamour.
For me TW is like an American version of Oscar Wilde. Both men managed to saturate their work with colour and grace while dealing with the ugliest and profane moments of human life. I love it when such extreme contradictions are carried off so easil...more
For me TW is like an American version of Oscar Wilde. Both men managed to saturate their work with colour and grace while dealing with the ugliest and profane moments of human life. I love it when such extreme contradictions are carried off so easil...more
I utterly loved this play, never seen the film , but now I have to and. I could really see Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman as the obsessive wife and the drunken husband struggling with marital issues. A beautifully written story with characters that are so well rounded that it's hard to grip that the story is actually quite short, way too short if you ask me, I want to know what happens after, I want to know what Brick actually felt for the friend he lost, I want to know how Maggie wound up, a...more
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is, possibly, the most enjoyable play I've read (it's right up there with A Doll's House). Not only is the main storyline very enjoyable, but the theme about Brick and his buried anguish regarding his homosexuality and guilty conscious really makes the play (It's ambiguous if Brick really is gay, but I figured he was). Completely unconventional for his time, the author weaves that storyline right under the surface of the main plot, and it causes most of Brick's inner strugg...more
I simply applaud Tennessee William’s attention to subjectivity he so clearly stated/advocated between the lines. It was inspiring to have an author allow for that like so.
Because I was already familiar with the play having naively studied it in high school by way of the film the story was not new to me but the original rendition of it seemed a taste different. Though it is a heightened, strained read in character intensity and depth I enjoyed myself once again.
It is fire, like a raw ...more
Because I was already familiar with the play having naively studied it in high school by way of the film the story was not new to me but the original rendition of it seemed a taste different. Though it is a heightened, strained read in character intensity and depth I enjoyed myself once again.
It is fire, like a raw ...more
Tennessee William's classic play tells the relationship of Maggie the Cat and her husband Brick on Brick's father's, Big Daddy's, plantation. My favorite aspect of this play is the subtlety of William's writing. A big theme in the play are the lies that various character tell one another, or themselves. Some lies are exposed, while others are very carefully hinted at, to the point where you don't know if it's a lie or the truth. The play has been adapted many times, but this theme has remain...more
I like Tennessee Williams. His tragedies are filled with unrequited love and somehow that's hopeful. It's as if Tennessee believes that tragedies are the result of good people out of sync, I don't know how else to describe it. In this play, Brick has quit on life but Margaret won't quit on Brick. It's romantic in a very tragic way. The last line of the play "Wouldn't it be funny if that were true" is a zinger and is completely unexpected but makes perfect sense. It's not hard to ...more
Written in true Tennessee Williams fashion, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" does not disappoint. Brick and Maggie have arrived at the Pollitt plantation for the celebration of Big Daddy's sixty fifth birthday. Or so it seems. The word has spread to both the Pollitt sons (Brick and Gooper) that Big Daddy's illness is fatal and he will not live to see sixty six. Both Big Mama and Big Daddy are unaware of this devasting news and are on the contrary celebrating the fact that Big Daddy will liv...more
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Thomas Lanier Williams III, better known by the nickname Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright of the twentieth century who received many of the top theatrical awards for his work. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee," the state of his father's birth. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for Cat on a Hot...more
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“Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.”
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“What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?—I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can...”
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