Tennessee Williams frequently re-wrote his plays, and he made significant changes to CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF both before and after the Broadway debut, so there are at least three versions of the play. All three versions are set in the 1950s, in a large bed-sitting room in a Mississippi delta plantation house; all three versions require a cast of seventeen, including four children and four African-American servants; all three have a run time of about three hours including intermission.

Williams originally wrote CAT with less sympathetic Maggie, and with Big Daddy appearing only in Act Two, and with a fairly dark conclusion. Director Elia Kazan agreed to direct the play for Broadway, but strongly urged Williams make several changes. These included making Maggie more sympathetic, extending the role of Big Daddy into Act Three. Williams did not like all of Kazan’s suggestions, but he followed them, and the result was the 1955 Broadway play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Circle Award. It is the version most commonly seen in revival and the one on which the 1958 film starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor was based. In 1974 Williams re-wrote the play, restoring much of what Kazan had asked him to remove. So far as I know, this particular variation is only available through Dramatist Play Service, which publishes an acting script and which holds the licensing rights to this (and all other variations) of the play.

When published for the general reading public, as in this edition, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF contains two versions of Act Three, the first as Williams originally wrote it, the second as Kazan asked, returning Big Daddy to the stage and including a somewhat softer conclusion. This edition also includes an introduction by Edward Albee, an essay by Brian Parker, and notes by Williams.

The play is famous. Big Daddy Pollock owns a large plantation in the Mississippi delta, where he lives with his wife, Big Mama. His oldest son Gooper, his very pregnant wife Mae, and their five children are frequent visitors; his younger son Brick and his very sexy wife Maggie have been permanent houseguests for some time. As the play progresses, we discover that Brick and Maggie have a deeply strained relationship and that Gooper and Mae plan to use their discord to take control of the estate when Big Daddy, who has terminal cancer, dies. Although the different third acts vary significantly, both hinge on Maggie’s determination to blackmail Brick into resuming physical intimacy in order to have a child, an event that will motivate Big Daddy to leave them the estate.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF is noted for the fact that the central characters—Brick and Maggie, Gooper and Mae, and Big Daddy and Big Mama—are extremely combative, not only with the other characters but with their own partners. Some people regard the play as a three-hour-long argument, and the extremes presented in the play would not be topped until Edward Albee’s WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF in 1962. The play is famous for the number of motifs and themes Williams presents, most particularly those of greed and deceit. At the time it debuted on Broadway, the play’s statements about homosexuality were considered scandalous, and they were so hot that the 1958 film version does completely changes the story line in order to avoid mention of it. The language of the play was also considered extreme, containing numerous profanities, vulgarities, and racial slurs.

CAT is a bitter but fascinating play with characters who are willing to go to almost any extreme to win what they want—and like A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE’s Blanche, Brick is a character who elects to live inside a fantasy that protects him from harsh realities, some of them of his own making. Uncomfortable, jittery, and explosive, it is a classic of 20th Century dramatic literature. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof