There's something about this story that I adore no matter if I see it as a play or as a film. The combination of the expert writing from Tennessee Williams, the setting, the strong characters, the humor injected into a serious tale, the subtext of homosexuality, all of these elements make for a story I love to revisit no matter what version or media I see it as. ( )

An American classic play. Tennessee Williams was a prolific playwrite and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of his best.

All the characters are fatally flawed, and Williams shows us how human and frail they each are. I started out disliking all of them, but over the course of the play a few of them started to grow on me.

The version I read (listened to) had two alternate 3rd acts, along with William's description of how each version came to be. The first version was Williams' original vision. But after conferring with his long-time director Elia Kazen, Williams rewrote the 3rd act to 1) give Big Daddy a 3rd act appearance and 2) to show Maggie in a more flattering light.

The 2nd version is the one that was performed on Broadway, and I think is the version included in the several movies. And definitely the version I preferred myself. ( )

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On a sultry summer evening family meets and secrets are revealed...so far, so a zillion other plays. Here, it's not really what the secrets are that's interesting, it's who the characters are and where the author's sympathies lie.

The first act slowly winds up to a very dramatic finish and tensions are racked up higher still in act 2. Then something strange happens - act 3 occurs twice! Williams has included his original draft of act 3 and the performance version, modified in response to the original director. It's a bit weird. Over-all I think I like the original version more.

Williams does some things I don't recall ever having seen before; he discusses the audience in stage direction and at one point rambles off into philosophising about the purpose of drama and such like. That comes as a bit of a shock after previously reading no drama except Ben Jonson this year, where-in you're lucky to get anything beyond entrance and exit instructions.

My only other experience with Williams is a production of The Glass Menagerie. There's overlap in theme and setting (the South, isolation) and that experience was excellent - this would clearly be even better in a decent production. I am now keen to pursue Williams a great deal further. ( )

probably the more i think about this the more i'll like it, so maybe those stars will increase, but for now: this is a sad little play about a family full of dislike for each other, lies, secrets, greed, and more. i like that it's staged in the same amount of time that it happens in life, which i think is unusual. speaking of the staging - i think i'd like this more (probably much more) if i'd seen it staged. i suspect it's quite powerful when performed.

i liked the unfolding of our knowledge about maggie and brick's relationship - how we don't know why their marriage is broken, just that it is, at first. and we see hints of why but are never 100% sure. (did he and skipper have a gay relationship? did he act on his feelings? did he not feel that way and only feel guilty about skipper's death when skipper revealed his feelings for brick? we don't know for sure, but we suspect.) actually, i like really how it all unfolds; we're given little sips of information, filling in the story that we'd partially told ourselves already, and having to rewrite it each time we get more of the truth. i didn't suspect the dislike between big daddy and big mama. i didn't suspect the scheming of mae and gooper. all in all, it turned my expectations of a family on its head, and that's a good thing.

what i don't understand, in general, is the why of it all. as i think more on it, maybe that'll make more sense to me, and increase my overall feeling for the play because of it. ( )