I’ve always heard about Elizabeth Taylor’s film of this play, but I’ve never actually seen it. After reading the play, I’ll probably watch it soon.

It’s actually a very good play. As in other plays by Tennessee Williams, we get this sort of very realistic and intense characters. Maggie the Cat, and the other characters are indeed intense and very powerful.

The story is centered around a family, whose patriarch, Big Daddy, is very sick and about to die. Both his sons and their wives are in the house, waiting for a good time to tell Big Mama (the mother of the family) what is really happening to her husband (she believes what they told her in the hospital, that it is nothing serious). That conflict underlies another one (pretty obvious when you have a dying partriach): the inheritance. Gooper, the eldest son, and his wife Mae argue that they should get a bigger part of the money, because they already have five children (and are expecting a sixth), while Brick and Maggie don’t have any. The relationship between the wives is based in constant fights and arguing over helping Big Daddy, as if that was the sure method to get the inheritance they both hope to get.

The relationship between Maggie and Brick was what caught me the most. Both of them are complex and developed characters. Maggie at first appears to be a social climber and so on, but it is revealed that she didn’t have much money growing up and the luxuries the Pollit family has are amazing to her. Brick, on the other hand, is pretty much a closeted homosexual. Maggie knows about her husband and his friend Skipper, who has died by the beginning of the play. Apparently, both men had some sort of relationship and Maggie is the beard for Brick. His refusal to have sex with her hasn’t allowed her to get pregnant, a fact that Mae constantly reminds to her.

Their relationship is pretty heartbreaking, if you think about how Brick is repressing his own identity (and sexuality), and what Maggie is getting in exchange for the luxuries that the Pollit represent for her, is basically a loveless marriage. Both of them are trapped and trying to survive one way or another. Brick hides in his drinking and retracts himself of his own family, especially his dying father. Maggie has no refuge, and that is what makes her character so terribly sad. She’s the cat in the hot tin roof, trying to survive and keep going. Through the play I felt really sorry for her and the situation she was in.

Tennessee Williams has a very interesting and well-developed focus on relationships in his plays. He works them, showing their subtleties and complexities in a very realistic way, and it’s amazing to see them at work. I’d really love to get to see a stage version of this one, because seeing a play in the flesh adds a lot to the text itself. But watching the film is close enought.