The cat on the hot tin roof

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The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Original title: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ) is a play written by Tennessee Williams (first performance: 1955) about a wealthy American farming family. It was filmed in 1958 under the same title .

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The title comes from an American proverb according to which the cat on the roof hesitates to jump down until the roof overheats; but then there is nothing more determined than she: with one leap she jumps. The "cat" in the play is Maggie.

The head of the wealthy Pollitt family, "Big Daddy", who has successfully built a cotton plantation all his life, has cancer and will soon die, but he does not yet know anything about it. Son Gooper, spurred on by his wife Mae, tries to get the fortune after Big Daddy's death. The play takes place during Big Daddy's last birthday party and begins with an argument between Gooper's brother, Brick, an alcoholic and indifferent to life, and his wife Margaret, “Maggie”, who also wants to inherit part of the property.

In order to make themselves popular with Big Daddy, the lawyer Gooper and Mae show concern for him and the plantation . They let their children, whom Margaret calls “neckless monsters,” sing or audition for Big Daddy.

After overhearing a conversation between Margaret and former football player and sports reporter Brick, they accuse the two of not having had a child because they believe Brick had a homoerotic relationship with his late childhood friend Skipper and because he was because of him Drinking addiction is impotent. In a discussion between Big Daddy and Brick, in which Big Daddy asks him why he is drinking, Gooper's and Mae's suspicions are confirmed; However, it also becomes clear that Big Daddy does not intend to bequeath his property to Gooper, he rather wants to free Brick of his addiction and transfer the plantation to him. Big Daddy, who believed he was healthy, learns in an argument with Brick that he is going to die soon.

To comfort the dying father-in-law, Maggie pretends that she is expecting his favorite son, her husband Brick, to have a child. But she is also determined to make the pretend reality. That night, she demands of Brick, they want to father a child. However, who will get the property after Big Daddy's death remains open at the end of the play.

The play is about mendacity, greed and preoccupation with illness and death. At times, caustic remarks between Margaret and Mae and the exaggerated concern of Gooper and his wife about Big Daddy and also about his wife Big Mama ensure the amusement of the reader and the viewer.

Williams himself described the piece as follows:

“ The bird that I want to catch in the net of this piece is not the solution to an individual's psychological problem. I would like to show the truthfulness of experiences within a group of people, that flickering, cloudy, elusive - but feverishly charged with tension - interplay of living beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. "
“ Life is cannibalistic. One me eats the other me. There is always someone gnawing at someone else, out of envy, greed for profit, out of fear. You know, the idea of ​​sleeping in a room where there isn't a bottle somewhere I find pretty terrible. After all, it could be that I wake up at night and need a drink. "

Important productions

expenditure

Web links

Commons : Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hardcover