Village Playhouse Opens 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' Friday

"There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity.... You can smell it. It smells like death...." – 'Big Daddy' Pollitt

That and many more of the most cutting, cruel and brutally honest lines in American drama will spill from the stage starting Friday night when the Village Playhouse of Wauwatosa opens Tennessee Williams' “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

The story of a family in the Mississippi Delta, caught in a transition of times, their repressed social and sexual mores coming to a low boil, then bubbling and bursting over while death itself hovers over all, ignites on stage at 7:30 p.m.

"Cat" will have five performances at that hour, Friday and Saturday and the following weekend, Oct. 5 and 6, plus a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee on Oct. 7. All performances will be staged at Christ King Hall, 2604 N. Swan Boulevard, Wauwatosa.

Village Playhouse is ahead of the game.

The play – purported to Williams' favorite – won a Pulitzer Prize, was made into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylot, Paul Newman and Burl Ives, and is now enjoying an anticipated resurgence with a new production featuring hot Scarlett Johansson as Maggie "the Cat" slated to open in January on Broadway.

"I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof." – Maggie

Tickets may be purchased at the door for $15, general admission; $13 for students and senior citizens. They may be reserved by telephone (414-207-4879) or email, catonahottinroof@villageplayhouse.org. More information about the play and Village Playhouse can be found at www.villageplayhouse.org.

For more information about the play or the cast members, contact Marjorie Pagel, publicity, at 414-425-4066 or pagel@wi.rr.com