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.

This is a weird play. And that’s the best word I have to describe it, because (for me) it doesn’t fall into the absurd theatre that you get in Beckett or Ionesco, as the characters appear to be a little more normal. Having said that, I’d also say that the “appearance” part of the previous statement is the key point here. As the play progresses, you get to see how completely messed up every character is here. There are only four of them, and it’s really hard to say which of them has more issues.

The play begins with Martha and George, a middle-aged couple, arriving from a party at the University where he works (and where her father is the president, as well). Martha tells her husband that she’s invited a new professor and his wife to join them for a few drinks after the party. In the dialogue between the two of them there’s a lot of aggressive comments and thinly veiled (or not veiled at all) insults, and it’s easy to see how estranged their relationship is. And that’s something that comes throughout the play: why are these two people still together? Maybe they don’t get a divorce for practical reason (Martha’s father is pretty much George’s boss), or because they’re just too used to each other. Any way, it’s a sorry picture of marriage the one they show here.

The guests are Nick and Honey, a new couple arrived in campus. At first they are very shocked by the way in which their hosts treat each other (as any normal person would be), but as the play goes on, they also show signs that their marriage is as messed up as George’s and Martha’s (interesting names, also. George and Martha Washington?). They got married because she was pregnant (and her family was loaded), but Nick says that after the wedding, they discovered she wasn’t actually pregnant. However, Honey heavily implies that she has had more than one abortion, but never out right says anything about it. It’s quite unnerving.
As the play progresses, one cannot help asking if the hosts aren’t playing with their guest on purpose. There’s a scene in which Martha tries to seduce Nick, and he follows her to her bedroom before the eyes of George. At that point, it’s hard to say whether they are accomplices in this and want to mess up with their guests’ marriage, or if they’re acting out of spite.
Through the whole play, Martha makes references to their son. Apparently, he’s the most perfect kid alive and she’s very proud of him, though George often says that the two of them have a bad relationship. He’s going to visit them the next day, and Martha appears to be very excited about it. However, there’s a moment when Honey thinks she’s heard a bell and asks who was at the door (while her husband and Martha are in the bedroom). George replies that there was a telegram, telling them that their son is dead.

The final scene is easily the saddest in the whole play. George tells Martha that their son is dead, and she bursts out crying (understandable). But then George reveals something else: the kid never existed. Apparently, Martha broke the rule of their pretend game and talked about the boy with others. So George decided to kill him. Martha was very annoying the entire play, but reading her breakdown in the final scene is pretty hard. It does seem as if their fake son is all what she has. And she’s just lost him forever.

I’d love to see this play on stage, because I’m sure there’s a lot of things that can be better conveyed by actors and so on, but it’s still worth reading it.