schaubühne am lehniner platz

Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof


When reality verges on a nightmare.


The famous Schaubühne returns to Athens with Tennessee William’s Cat on a hot tin roof (1954). Thomas Ostermeier’s daring direction dispenses with the localizing features of the American South and brings the action forward to the present day, while his cast includes such legendary German actors as Kirsten Dene (Dene in Thomas Bernhard’s Ritter, Dene Voss) and Josef Bierbichler.


Opting for neo-realist staging and underground musicality, the director emphasizes the corporeality of his cast, adopts a critical approach to the play’s ‘sacred family’ and rewrites its ending. Taking the characters’ inner world as his starting point, Ostermeier explores fundamental issues of human co-existence: father / son conflict, the battle of the sexes, repressed homosexuality, compulsive lying, alcoholism and struggle to secure an inheritance [G.T.].


In German with Greek surtitles.


Production rights: Jussenhoven & Fischer (Köln)