Die Katze auf dem heißen Blechdach

The older son Gooper, a successful lawyer, travels with his wife Mae and a large group of grandchildren. However, there are no offspring from the younger son Brick and his wife Maggie, which will be one of the defining themes of the festival. While Maggie strives to combine her own desire to have children with her life as an enlightened woman and a modern couple, Brick struggles with depression, triggered by the end of his sports career and the death of his childhood friend Skipper. He drowns her in alcohol, which leads to accusations of failure and impotence, as well as speculation about a homoerotic relationship with Skipper.

A storm is brewing outside and cramming the family members together. Inside, the storms become hurricanes. In the middle of this charged atmosphere comes the news that Big Daddy is incurable and is already in the final stages of cancer: the party turns into a dance of death. The conflicts escalate.

In the presence of Doctor Baugh and Reverend Tooker, Mother Pollitt tries to hold the shop together - angry about the dispute over the inheritance and the supposed greed of Gooper and Mae, desperate about Brick's alcoholism and Maggie's childlessness, and grieving about the impending loss of her partner and the common construct.

Tennessee Williams' text from 1955 is a modern classic with its web of loves, lies and suffering. In the microcosm of the family, he presents a wide variety of life models for discussion, allows individual needs, hardships and longings to collide, and tells of dependencies and dynamics. His characters are all victims and perpetrators at the same time: approachable in their search for protection, understanding and warmth, but equally brutal in their drive for confirmation, profile and advantage.

Nervous cats on a hot tin roof, delaying the decision to jump until the heat becomes unbearable. Here, no one gives themselves anything - which is not without a certain humor.