Cat on a Hot Tin Roof will arrive at the Novello on 21 November this year. The star studded Broadway transfer could be the big hit the Novello has been looking for.
Fame’s Debbie Allen directs the Tennessee Williams classic, staged for the first time last year with an all black cast. The play opened to mixed reviews at the Broadhurst Theatre last summer but was a triumph, selling out its entire run in only a few weeks.
The London transfer sees Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s big stars reprise their roles. Phylicia Rashad returns as Big Mama. Rashad has won numerous awards on Broadway but is best known as Clair Huxtable in The Cosby Show. Multi-award winning actor James Earl Jones plays the strict Big Daddy. Jones has countless stage and screen credits to his name but is most famously remembered as the sinister voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Joining Rashad and Jones is British actor Adrian Lester as Brick. Lester is known in Britain for his roles in such cult TV shows as Hustle and Bonekickers.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof follows Priestley’s An Inspector Calls into the Novello. The two plays are inspired choices that will dust off the venue after the shock closure of Spring Awakening last month. Although the Novello is quickly gaining a reputation for failed musicals, its plays invariably do well. The two to come look to follow the pattern.
The much studied An Inspector Calls features on the national curriculum, so its September opening will ensure full houses. Following this with a star studded revival of a classic play will surely reinstate the Novello as a main player in the West End.
