Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

First performed in 1955, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of American playwright Tennessee Williams’s best-known works. This classic play won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best American Play, and was adapted into a 1958 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Adapted from Williams’s short story “Three Players of a Summer Game,” the three-act Cat on a Hot Tin Roof occurs in real-time as the Pollitt family gathers to celebrate the birthday of their patriarch, Big Daddy. Big Daddy, a wealthy cotton tycoon, is dying of cancer, but his two sons and their wives have lied to him and his wife about his condition—hoping to share the bad news after the party. This lie is just the first in a complex web of deceptions that unfurls as the characters vie to become the sole inheritor of Big Daddy’s estate. The play includes themes of family dysfunction and strict adherence to gender roles. 

This guide refers to the 2004 New Directions Publishing Kindle edition of the text and uses location numbers rather than page numbers.

Content Warning: This guide describes and discusses the play’s treatment of alcohol addiction and anti-gay bias. The guide also references brief mentions of suicidal thinking and child sexual exploitation.