Reviews for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Other Plays : Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore; Night

The average rating for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Other Plays : Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore; Night based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-01-04 00:00:00 Rhea Gargour The purpose is for the cat to stay on the hot tin roof as long as possible, to cling to it even when it burns, burns, burns ... and the only way to manage that is to engage in a nervous, painful dance of sorts, moving swiftly, each movement relieving the heat for a second before the paws land on the surface again. Moaning sounds escape when the burning sensations reach consciousness again, and again, and again. Tennessee Williams knows family life better than any other modern playwright I can think of. The burden of belonging without fitting. The pain of loneliness in a crowded, narrow space. The longing and the detachment. The helplessness and the power play. The set pieces and the random aggression. He also knows society's power to destroy a family. The tragedy of Brick's failure to accept his own sexuality is doubly exposed when it becomes evident that his own prejudice against himself, shaped in the toxic heterosexuality of his athlete environment, is not mirrored in Big Daddy's patriarchal mind. It is the father who pleads with the son to embrace tolerance, not vice versa. But society's impact weighs too strongly on Brick for him to be able to let go of his self-loathing. Society's call for conventional family life also forces Maggie to take extreme measures to secure her fake marriage by having a child, and it forces the unloved Gooper to trick his way to status and representation by denouncing his own brother's weaknesses and alcoholism. When Brick suggests to Maggie to just jump off the hot tin roof ("cats can jump"), he misses the point of the structure that destroys them all, himself included. If home is that hot tin roof, then you have to stay. Who stays last wins.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-19 00:00:00 Chris Batie It was more than I expected. Treatments of avarice, repressed homosexuality, dishonesty, cruelty. I was surprised by the hard hitting nature of the work given the era. Reading through the 20th century Pulitzer drama winners shows how edgy and realistic drama had become with that passing of time.