Book Review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?
On the list of plays I would like to see live and this is one of them. I remember watching ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and ‘Summer and Smoke’ live in theatre. True, I also watched ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ on the National Theatre Live during lockdown -but it wasn’t live. It was still brilliant though.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - where do I begin? This is one of the most famous plays of the 20th century. And sure, I’m guessing it’s because it deals with themes of homosexuality in a time when conversion therapy was the norm or heck! You would probably end up in jail… or dead, this play is set in the Deep South in America after all.
The play is effectively a crucible of resentment and gossip, two ingredients that do not make a happy home. Brick and Maggie, our central characters, are at the family seat - a plantation in the Deep South of Mississippi. It’s time to celebrate Big Daddy’s birthday - possibly his last as he has been diagnosed with a malignant tumour. Maggie and Brick do not have children, much to the consternation of Maggie and the callous delight of her brother and sister-in-law Gooper and Mae. Brick is recovering from a broken ankle and mourning the loss of his closest friend, Skipper.
If we think about certain elements of this play - the heat, facing death, money, unwanted truths and lies. They make this crucible of a hot summer’s evening, unbearable. The guilt of Brick over Skipper’s death and the unwarranted truth of who he is and what he feels ripples in the undercurrent of family drama. Nowadays homosexuality is much less frowned upon than it was in the 50’s Mississippi. Skipper’s and Brick’s feelings are left unresolved when Skipper dies. Maggie unwittingly is the mirror of unresolved feelings - she craves family, closeness and love. She is our ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’; Maggie is determined and relentless - she is a tour de force. But her resolve has a flavour of desperation, revealing itself when Gooper and Mae try and take over the plantation and Big Daddy’s estate. Gooper facing the sad truth that he was never the favourite and always overlooked in favour of Brick.
This overflowing crucible finally ignites when Maggie releases her last desperate lie - that she is having a child. A lie she is determined to make true, much to the exhausted consternation of Brick, signalling the death of their fragmented marriage. It is a brilliant piece of theatre, one I would like to see live, having read the play or I may even see the version with Elizabeth Taylor, which I hear is equally brilliant. A great piece of literature and would highly recommend it.