Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

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1 Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, London

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, London

Cat on A Hot Tin Roof plays at the Novello Theatre in London, booked until April 2010

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof Videos

Nov 21st - opens Tuesday 1 December - 10th April

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof Pictures

Phylicia Rashād

(born Phylicia Ayers-Allen on June 19, 1948) is an American actress, best known for her role as Clair Huxtable on the 1984-1992 NBC sitcom The Cosby Show.

In 2004, Rashad became the first African-American actress to win the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, for her role in the revival of A Raisin in the Sun[1][2].

She resumed the role in the 2008 television adaption of A Raisin in the Sun (2008 film), which earned her the 2009 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special.

James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931) is an American actor of stage and screen, well known for his deep basso voice. To modern audiences, he is best known for providing the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise and Mufasa in The Lion King and for the role of Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams.

Jones is an accomplished stage actor as well; he has won Tony awards in 1969 for The Great White Hope and in 1987 for Fences. Othello, King Lear, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Abhorson in Measure for Measure, and Claudius in Hamlet are Shakespearean roles he has played. He received Kennedy Center Honors in 2002.

In February 2008, he began starring on Broadway as Big Daddy in a limited-run, all-African-American production of Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Debbie Allen and mounted at the Broadhurst Theatre.

In November 2009, James will reprise the role of Big Daddy in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Novello Theatre in London's West End. This production also stars Sanaa Lathan as Maggie, Phylicia Rashad as Big Mamma, and Adrian Lester as Brick.

On October 5, 2009, Jones made a guest appearance on the television series House playing African dictator Antipas Dibala.

Press release:

Maggie The Cat

The role of Maggie The Cat, has been significant in the careers of the following actors

Barbara Bel Geddes brought Maggie to life in the Broadway premiere in 1955, directed by Elia Kazan. An instant succès de scandale because of Bel Geddes’s palpable sexual desire and the possibility of Brick and Skipper’s homosexuality.

For the 1958 Hollywood movie, with Paul Newman and Burl Ives, all references to homosexuality were excised. The censorship disgusted Williams, but focused more attention on Elizabeth Taylor’s smouldering, siren turn as Maggie. The cat made her a household name.

In 1974 in an acclaimed Broadway revival Elizabeth Ashley inhabited the Southern Spitfire to Keir Dullea’s sullen Brick. Reputedly, Ashley was Williams’s preferred Maggie and this his favourite production, for which he finally inserted the swearing.

Lindsay Duncan was a famously jittery Maggie in Howard Davies’s 1988 production at the National. “What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?” Brick had long asked. “Just staying on it I guess,” Duncan retorted twitchily, “long as she can.” Maggie won Duncan an Evening Standard Award.

A 1990 Broadway revival, also by Davies, featured Kathleen Turner as an older, more stalwart Maggie. Watching her don stockings was, according to one reviewer, “a ritual of exquisitely prolonged complexity”.

Ashley Judd in Anthony Page’s 1993 revival

Anika Noni Rose became the first African-American Maggie in Debbie Allen’s 2008 production. “Maggie the cat is alive!” her character cried. Watching Rose’s rippling, sensual performance, the critics could only agree.

Press Release

REHEARSALS BEGIN FOR WEST END RUN OF DEBBIE ALLEN’ S SELL OUT BROADWAY PRODUCTION OF CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

On Monday 19 October, the cast of Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof began rehearsals for the show’s West End run at the Novello Theatre from 21 November to 10 April 2010.

Debbie Allen’s sell-out Broadway production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof hasset designsby Morgan Large with costume designs by Fay Fullerton, lighting by David Holmes, sound by Richard Brooker and original music by Andrew “Tex” Allen. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is produced by Stephen Byrd and Alia Jones forFront Row Productions.

The cast is Richard Blackwood (Brightie), Guy Burgess (Lacey), Claudia Cadette (Nanny), Peter De Jersey (Gooper), Derek Griffiths (Reverend Tooker), James Earl Jones (Big Daddy), Sanaa Lathan (Maggie), Susan Lawson-Reynolds (Sookey), Adrian Lester (Brick), Joseph Mydell (Doctor Baugh), Phylicia Rashad (Big Mama) and Nina Sosanya (Mae). They are joined by Yvonne Gidden who will understudy Big Mama.

A powerful Southern family gathers at a birthday celebration for patriarch Big Daddy who is unaware he is dying. In a scramble to secure their part of his estate, family members hide the truth about his diagnosis from him and Big Mama. Tensions mount between alcoholic former football hero Brick and his beautiful but sexually frustrated wife Maggie ‘the Cat’. As their troubled relationship comes to a stormy and steamy climax, a shockwave of secrets is finally revealed.

Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof was last seen in the West End in 2001directed by Anthony Page with a cast including Frances O’Connor, Brendan Fraser, Ned Beatty and Gemma Jones. In1988 Howard Davies directed a National Theatre production with a cast including Ian Charleson, Lindsay Duncan, Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Eric Porter.

Richard Blackwood’s stage credits include Roy Williams’ Angel House and The Unexpected Guest, which both toured nationally and The Brothers at the Hackney Empire. As well as his own show for Channel 4, Blackwood’s television credits include Britannia High, Dani’s House, Shoot The Messenger, Little Miss Jocelyn and Holby. He is a regular at the Comedy Store in the West End and presents his own radio programme on Choice FM.

James Earl Jones won Best Actor Tony Award for his performances in August Wilson’s Fences and The Great White Hope and was also nominated for a Tony for his role in the revival of On Golden Pond. His other Broadway credits include Master Harold and the Boys, Of Mice and Men and The Iceman Cometh. Multi award-winning James Earl Jones made his film debut in 1964 in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Stangelove. As well as being the voice of Darth Vader, he has since been seen on screen in Field of Dreams, The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games. James Earl Jones made his London stage debut in 1978 in the Broadway transfer of Paul Robeson.

Derek Griffiths’extensive theatre credits include The Miser, The Odd Couple, The Government Inspector, Nude with Violin and Loot, all for the Royal Exchange Theatre, Peter Pan, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast, Run for Your Wife and Noises Off all in the West End and Measure for Measure and Twelfth Night for the Royal Shakespeare Company. On television his credits include Doctors, Holby City, Casualty, Queen’s Park Story and Insect Antics. His film credits Gallowwalker and Fierce Creatures.

Tony award-winning Sanaa Lathan will be reunited on stage with Phylicia Rashad following her 2004 Broadway debut in the critically acclaimed production of Raisin In The Sun. She is best known on television in the UK for playing Michelle Landau in Nip/Tuck. Lathan’s film credits include Wonderful World opposite Matthew Broderick, The Family That Preys alongside Kathy Bates and Something New, Alien vs. Predator and Out of Time.

Adrian Lester played the title roles in Henry V for the National Theatre and Hamlet at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord. As well as Cheek By Jowl’s As You Like It, his many theatre credits include Six Degrees of Separation for the Royal Court and Company for the Donmar Warehouse. He is best known on television for playing con-artist ‘Mickey Bricks’ in Hustle. His has also been seen on screen in Merlin, Ballet Shoes, Being Human and Afterlife. On film his credits include Primary Colors, Born Romantic, Day After Tomorrow and Doomsday.

Phylicia Rashad starred in the Broadway production of August: Osage County and won the Tony for Best Actress for her role in A Raisin in the Sun. Her other recent Broadway credits include Gem of the Ocean, Jelly’s Last Jam, Into the Woods and Dreamgirls. Rashad has performed extensively off Broadway at the Lincoln Centre, the Manhattan Theatre Club and the New York Shakespeare Festival as well as regionally throughout the US. A two-time Emmy Award nominee, Phylicia Rashad is most well known on television for her role as Clair Huxtable in The Cosby Show. Her film credits include Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, Free of Eden, Loving Jezebel and The Visit.

Nina Sosanya’s theatre credits include Love’s Labour’s Lost for the Royal Shakespeare Company in which she played Rosalind and Fix Up for the National Theatre. Previously she was seen in The Vortex at the Donmar Warehouse and House and Garden for the National Theatre. Her television credits include Framed, Cape Wrath and Doctor Who. On film her credits include Manderlay, Code 46 and Love Actually.

Debbie Allen made her Broadway directorial debut with Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, having previously, for over a decade, annually written, choreographed and directed commissioned theatre productions for The Kennedy Center. Allen’s directing credits on screen include The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air featuring Will Smith, A Different World, Girlfriends, The Jamie Foxx Show and Family Ties. Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning Allen is best known on screen for playing Lydia Grant in the original film and television series of Fame. She made her Broadway acting debut in the 1970 production of Purlie.

James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad and Sanaa Lathan are appearing with the support of UK Equity, incorporating the Variety Artistes’ Federation, pursuant to an exchange program between American Equity and UK Equity.

wikipedia:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" is the story of a Southern family in crisis, focusing on the turbulent relationship of a husband and wife, Brick and Maggie ("The Cat") Pollitt, and their interaction with Brick's family over the course of one evening gathering at the family estate in Mississippi, ostensibly to celebrate the birthday of patriarch and tycoon "Big Daddy" Pollitt. Maggie, though witty and beautiful, has escaped a childhood of desperate poverty to marry into the wealthy Pollitt family, but finds herself suffering in an unfulfilling marriage. Brick, an aging football hero, has neglected his wife and further infuriates her by ignoring his brother's attempts to gain control of the family fortune. Brick's indifference and his near-continuous drinking dates back to the recent suicide of his friend Skipper. Big Daddy is unaware that he has cancer and will not live to see another birthday; his doctors and his family have conspired to keep this information from him and his wife. His relatives are in attendance and attempt to present themselves in the best possible light, hoping to receive the definitive share of Big Daddy's enormous wealth.

Themes

The theme of the play is mendacity, a word Brick uses to describe his disgust with the world. Moreover, it revolves around the lies in the aging and decaying Southern society. With one exception, the entire family lies to Big Daddy and Big Mama, as does the doctor. Big Daddy lies to his wife.

The play alludes to the presence of homosexuality in Southern society and examines the complicated rules of social conduct in this culture. Tennessee Williams himself was unclear about the nature of Brick's feelings for his friend Skipper while developing different versions of the play.

There are two versions of the play, one of which was influenced by director Elia Kazan, who directed the play on Broadway, and another which was performed for the first time in London. The original Broadway production, which opened in 1955, was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie; Ben Gazzara as Brick; Burl Ives as Big Daddy; Mildred Dunnock as Big Mama; Pat Hingle as Gooper; and Madeleine Sherwood as Mae. Bel Geddes was the only cast member nominated for a Tony Award, and Kazan was nominated for Best Director of a Play. Both Ives and Sherwood would reprise their roles in the 1958 film version. The cast also featured the southern blues duo Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry and had as Gazzara's understudy the young Cliff Robertson. When Mr. Gazzara left the play, Jack Lord was chosen to replace him.

A 1974 revival featured Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea, Fred Gwynne, Kate Reid, and Charles Siebert. Ashley was nominated for a Tony Award. In that same decade, John Carradine and Mercedes McCambridge toured in a road company production as Big Daddy and Big Mama, respectively. For this production, Williams restored much of the text which he had removed from the original production at the insistence of Elia Kazan. According to Elizabeth Ashley, Williams also allowed the actors to examine his original notes and various drafts of the script to make their own additions to the dialogue.

The 1988 London National Theatre production, directed by Howard Davies, starred Ian Charleson, Lindsay Duncan, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, and Eric Porter.

A 1990 revival featured Kathleen Turner who received a Tony nomination for her performance as Maggie, though New York Magazine called her "hopelessly lost...in this limp production." Charles Durning, as Big Daddy, received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Daniel Hugh Kelly was Brick, and Polly Holliday was Big Mama. Holliday also received a Tony nomination.

A 2003 revival received lukewarm reviews despite the presence of film stars Ashley Judd and Jason Patric. Only Ned Beatty, as Big Daddy, and Margo Martindale, as Big Mama, were singled out for impressive performances. Martindale received a Tony nomination.

A 2004 production at the Kennedy Center featured Mary Stuart Masterson as Maggie, Jeremy Davidson as Brick, George Grizzard as Big Daddy, Dana Ivey as Big Mama, and Emily Skinner as Mae.

A 2008 all-African-American production, directed by Debbie Allen, opened on Broadway to mixed reviews. Film star Terrence Howard made his Broadway debut as Brick, alongside stage veterans James Earl Jones (Big Daddy), Phylicia Rashad (Big Mama), Anika Noni Rose (Maggie) and Lisa Arrindell Anderson (Mae). The production will move to London's West End in November 2009[1].