With a cast led by Hugo Weaving, Pamela Rabe and Zahra Newman, Sydney Theatre Company’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Kip Williams, is one of the most hotly anticipated theatre shows of the year.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sydney Theatre Company Pamela Rabe, Zahra Newman and Hugo Weaving. Photo © Rene Vaile

It’s a play that Williams has long wanted to tackle, but he knew that the timing, and the cast, had to be right. “I’ve been a fan of Tennessee Williams for many, many years and I had only directed one of his plays once before which was Suddenly Last Summer [for STC] back in 2015. So I had been looking to return to his texts but his plays ask a huge amount of the artists who come together to realise them, so it is not a decision that you take lightly,” says Williams.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof premiered on Broadway in 1955, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Set on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta, the play takes place over the course of one evening in the home of rich cotton tycoon Big Daddy Pollitt....