Cat On A Hot Tin Roof - Apollo

This isn't worth parting with your cash for. Looks great, but entirely empty in acting terms. You can feel it would work quite well if only the cast could get it to lift off, but sadly it is never in danger of happening. 2*.

It seems to be selling well at high prices too. Not too bothered about missing this as I am not a Sienna Miller fan.

Just wanted to say I agree with you, although Lindsay Duncan would still get my vote.  I think this is the best cast I have seen in this play and really enjoyed Hayley Squires performance as Mae the other feline in the play

I've been trying (and trying 😬). Does anyone know where the lottery seats are btw? Thx 

Same. Been entering almost everyday.

Wonder how many tickets vs how many entrants...

I understand that they offer the 'winners' tickets 4 hours before curtain up, then if they don't take them up they offer them to the next selected people after one hour. Which explains why I sometimes get my "sorry.." email at 15.30 and other times at 17.30. So I guess this means sometimes I'm ruled after the first draw. All very fascinating stuff, I'm sure you'll agree 😂

Cheers Monkey - bought a regular ticket for September through gritted teeth.

Won the lottery for this

So I now think lotteries are great

Got the notification at 4:30 so presume I got in after someone else didn't claim their tickets. Seats are in the back block of the stalls, normally £65. You don't get told where the seats are before booking, as far as I could see

And the 'ginger' is relevant because...?

Fair enough, I'd forgotten!

It seems to be selling really well, so I suspect commercial reasons dictated a west end run!

I am forever indebted to Ben Brantley for his review of the current production of A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I was going to give it a miss, after everything I had read about it. Mr. Brantley, I big thank you.
I had seen many productions of ACOAHTR (six at least, including the film). I always felt it was the only, of all Tennessee William’s main plays, that failed to achieve that painful level of gut-wrenching pathos the playwright is famous for. In all its previous incarnations, the play felt to me more like a worn-out melodrama, a melodrama with something incandescent buried at its core, but which somehow failed to explode and propagate.
I was somehow always reminded of those old dramatic Italian paintings scattered in old museums which are covered with a thick crust of many layers of dirt. Hidden behind all that, you know there is something glorious and magnificent. You can sense it’s there, but you cannot fully enjoy it in that dimmed, reduced state. Once the masterpiece is cleaned and restored, you are frankly sick with a sense of beauty that it’s almost unbearable to experience. The vibrant colours of the human flesh, the full radiance of every little detail that compose the drama is even more intense that you could originally surmise.
Human beings are predators, not very much different from those wild animals seen on BBC or National Geographic documentaries. They seem to be always hunting or being hunted. Men are, however, predators afflicted with a conscience and moral sense. I think this is the painful truth the play observes and that this new staging goes to great lengths to emphasise. Maggie is aware of that truth, and so is Big Daddy. The tragedy of Brick is that he is not. Morally outraged and disgusted with the destructive lies – the mendacity - he sees everywhere around him, lies he cannot himself understand, but only feel, he spends the play washing himself, showering listless, in an almost stupefied state, as if to cleanse and purge his soul. He can’t understand that the idealised bond he had with his mate and kindred spirit, Skipper, could have been so utterly corrupted and disfigured by the laws that moulded his own understanding of things and brought it all to a tragic end.
I thought the acting was, without exception, excellent. Jack O’Donnell was the most tormented Brick I have ever seen on stage (followed closely perhaps by a stunned and slightly cynical Adrian Lester). He had pain written all over his face, which made his despair for the long-to-come click even more understandable. I really hope to see him in another play. Sienna Miller was an unusually intelligent Maggie. And Colm Meany, an unexpectedly human Big Daddy. The final scene between Big Daddy and Brick was sublimely tender and extremely touching, and reminded me of another great moment of filial love in the current version of Hamlet. If only Brick had managed to check his tongue, communication between them might finally have been possible.
Finally – I have already written much more than I originally intended-, I especially appreciated the way the firecrackers were used to punctuate and heighten the drama.

I am probably super thick, but this went right over my head. What happens if there's a shotgun on stage?