The State-run Vilnius Maly Theatre invites the audience to the premiere performance of the contemporary German director Christian Weise's (b. 1973) play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, based on the vintage play by the American playwright Tennessee Williams, for which the author received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. It is one of Williams' most famous works, revealing the longing for intimacy and the torment of passion. The play has been made into a film, and has been staged in Lithuanian theatres several times. This time, however, this classic play will be revived in a new and unexpected way on the theatre stage, as it will be revived on the stage of the Vilnius Maly Theatre by the director of the Vilnius Little Theatre, who has his own distinctive style and style of writing. Ch. Weise. In many of his productions, stories are constructed using a kind of "upside-down", multi-layered, absurd, ironic, comic way of telling stories. The characters are vivid, interesting, distinctive, the language used in the direction is unusual, but it seems to be used to reveal the story in a completely natural way. This in itself creates a painterly, extravagantly strange atmosphere in which the story unfolds.
The play tells the story of a plantation owner in the American South, Daddy, who celebrates his birthday with his family. Daddy is deathly ill, but he doesn't know it yet. This leads to a struggle for his inheritance among his descendants. While his son Guper, his wife May and their spoilt children play the happy family card in front of Daddy, Meg tries to persuade her alcoholic husband Brick to join in the battle for Daddy's pots of gold. But Brik has already withdrawn from the competition. Not only because he had to give up his football career after an injury, but also to hide his love for his former teammate Captain and avoid appearing as a "paedophile" in the eyes of his family and society. But Meg is the persistent "cat on a hot tin roof" who then takes a determined step into the unknown: she promises to give birth to Brick's child, making the pregnancy a fact for Dad and the whole family.
Weise tells this play, written in 1955 and updated in 1974 (this is the one he chose), which won an Oscar for its film version, as a terrifying story. Under the guise of kinship and a supposed concern for loved ones, a ruthless struggle is waged for hard-earned wealth. No outsiders are welcome here. Anyone who, like Brick, goes off the rails is sent back. The unpleasant truth is glossed over.
Ch. Weise, an experienced scholar of bourgeois life, finds a wry humour in Williams's worldview and creates a worldview in which the characters' intentions and motives are most beautifully revealed.
American playwright Tennessee Williams (real name Thomas Lanier Williams, 1911-1983) is today considered one of the three most influential playwrights of the twentieth century, along with his contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, who maintained the high standard of the American theatre during the 1950s and 1960s. Critics have called Williams' work "poetic realism", its psychological layers reflecting the imperfections and weaknesses of people in the face of a life of enslavement. The author's creative legacy includes 30 plays, numerous short stories, poems and novellas, which, together with his impressive biography, remain the subject of study by many literary historians.
T. "It is a cry, almost a scream, a demand for a universal, deeply human effort to know oneself and others so much better - enough to recognize that no one person is more privileged to know what is right and what is virtuous than another, to know what hypocrisy is and what evil is, and so on. If people - races and nations - would start with this self-confessed truth, then, I believe, the world would move away from this degeneracy that I have unconsciously chosen as the essential, allegorical theme of all my plays.
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"CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF is presented by special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.";
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Play by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Christian Weise
Creative team:
Director - Christian Weise
Playwright - Tennessee Williams
Translation of the play by Lilija Vanagienė
Translation of the play was reviewed and updated by Andrius Merkevičius
Dramaturg - Beate Seidel
Scenography - Julia Oschatz
Costume Designer - Josa Marx
Composer - Jens Dohle
Rehearsal Reviewer - Jūratė Pieslytė
Starring:
MARGRETA - Tekle Baroti
BRICK - Šarūnas Januškevičius
MOTHER - Gintarė Latvėnaitė-Glušajeva
MOTHER - Ilona Kvietkutė
FATHER - Tomas Rinkūnas
FATHER TUCKER - Balys Latėnas
GUUPER - Tomas Kliukas
DAD BO - Tomas Stirna
GIRL - Larisa Kalpokaite
LITTLE BERNIE: Jonas Braškys, Mindaugas Capas
