Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is probably Tennessee Williams’s most famous play. I think most people are culturally aware of the play and its plot, even if—like me—they haven’t ever sat through a full production. For the uninitiated, it’s a play set over a single evening in 1950s Mississippi, as a family gathers at the familial plantation home to celebrate the birthday of the patriarch, Big Daddy. Over the course of the evening, various deceptions emerge and reveal the true relationships between the characters, and most especially between Brick (one of Big Daddy’s children) and his wife Maggie.

It’s one of those plays that I’m slightly embarrassed to have never seen, so I decided to correct that by streaming the 2018 National Theatre production starring Sienna Miller and Jack O’Connell and directed by Benedict Andrews.

There are some strange decisions in this production. Andrews has attempted to transplant the action from the 1950s to the present day, which I didn’t find convincing: the update seemed to be confined to including mobile phone calls. Yet, it’s surely the case that the era of messaging and social media would have had a more far-reaching impact on plot points. The plot is also rooted in the social norms of the 1950s, which don’t straightforwardly read across to contemporary society.

The staging also has some strange decisions. The pared down set essentially consists of a bed and a shower, the latter essentially being a standalone pipe arising from the bedroom carpet. Alcohol is a key feature of the plot, but the ‘drinks cabinet’ is a set of bottles, glasses, and ice placed on the floor at the front of the stage. I’m sure this is supposed to be representative of something, but to me, it just seemed plainly awkward, with actors having to make all sorts of distracting moves to fill their glasses.

The performances, however, were mostly spot on. The accents were a little distracting at times, particularly at moments when they became very uneven, but there were some genuinely exceptional moments: the key middle scene of the play, a lengthy discussion between Brick and Big Daddy, had real emotional heft in this production. This is a section that relies heavily on social norms, and yet of O’Connell and Colm Meaney’s acting easily cleared that hurdle.

This is the only production I’ve seen, so I’ve nothing to compare it to besides the production in my mind. I suspect that the creative decisions meant that this didn’t give the best possible account of the text, but I still enjoyed it, and it’s still well-worth seeing.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is available to stream on NT at Home until at least March 2024.