Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Along with "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire," this play is considered one of Tennessee Williams' three representative masterpieces. The script portrays an extraordinary day in a large Southern American family whose kinship is sustained solely by lies: on the occasion of the birthday celebration for "Big Daddy," the estate owner who is terminally ill and not long for this world, two sons with vastly different personalities and a pair of covetous sisters-in-law stage a family storm over a 28,000-acre family estate. The play focuses on the youngest daughter-in-law, Maggie, who, because her desires for love and wealth are unfulfilled, is as restless and struggling as a cat on a hot tin roof. The heart-to-heart battle between Big Daddy and his youngest son, Brick, revolving around the idea that "life is a deception," also reveals the darkness and tearing apart of human nature. The play earned the author his second Pulitzer Prize and is one of the most famous repertoire pieces in American theater; the film adaptation starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor is also a classic in film history.