Theatre review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

In a Young Vic production that, for the first time, skips the Young Vic entirely and goes straight to the West End (and its prices,) the theatre follows up Benedict Andrews’ revolving Streetcar Named Desire with another of the most famous Tennessee Williams plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. We’re still in a sweltering part of the American South (Tennessee itself, this time,) but unlike most Williams characters nobody here is strapped for cash: Big Daddy (Colm Meaney) owns the largest plantation in the state, and his whole family have gathered to celebrate his 65th birthday. What most of the family knows but he doesn’t is that this is his last birthday: The tests he was told came back negative actually revealed he has terminal cancer and very little time left. We see the action from the perspective of alcoholic younger son Brick (Jack O’Connell) and his wife Maggie (Sienna Miller.)

Theatre review: Carthage

Carthage opens and closes with the same scene, a cyclical nature that mirrors the life of the character at its centre: Tommy (Jack McMullen) was born in a prison, and he died in one. Robert Hastie's production at the Finborough often references these cycles in Chris Thompson's debut play, in which scenes from Tommy's life alternate with those following his death, in which the question of who's to take the blame for it is bandied about with very few people willing to accept responsibility. His childhood is spent yo-yoing between foster care and his mother Anne's (Claire-Louise Cordwell) flat, until he commits a particularly heinous, unnamed crime that lands him in a young offenders' institution. There a particularly aggressive attack on the guards ends up with a routine restraint procedure going wrong, and Tommy stops breathing.