Greensburg Civic Theatre stages sultry 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'

Greensburg Civic Theatre is traveling back to 1955 and the Mississippi Delta, where the weather isn’t the only thing that’s sultry.

The company will close its 2021-22 season with Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Curtain times will be 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Greensburg Garden & Civic Center, 951 Old Salem Road.

The setting is a plantation house where a family gathers to celebrate the 65th birthday of its patriarch, Big Daddy.

Among the attendees is Big Daddy’s favorite son, Brick, an ex-football player who spends his time drinking and avoiding the romantic attentions of his wife, Maggie, “the cat.” Also on hand are the matriarch, Big Momma, and Brick’s jealous older brother Gooper and sister-in-law Mae.

The celebration is tempered by tensions among the various characters and things revealed in the course of the drama — running the gamut of greed, deceit, self-delusion, sexual desire and repression, homophobia, sexism and the looming specter of death due to Big Daddy’s terminal illness.

Though theatergoers might find some aspects of the play quaint, the themes are timeless, said director Vince D’Angelo of Oakmont.

“The conflicts are still the same,” he said. “Seventy years on, people still have problems with sexuality and how people react to it. There are still family conflicts. Some things never change.”

As a director, he said, his biggest challenge was “getting the right actors in the right parts to make them believable.”

The cast includes real-life spouses Ron and Mary Ferrara of Vandergrift as Big Daddy and Big Momma, Josh Kinneer of Donegal as Brick, Rachel Carey of Kennedy Township as Maggie, Craig Soich of Greensburg as Gooper and Jessica Zack of Uniontown as Mae.

Stage manager is Marcus Greenberg of Greensburg.

This is GCT’s third attempt at staging “Cat,” postponed for the past two years with the pandemic.

“It’s an amazing play,” D’Angelo said. “A lot of the local companies do the comedies and the musicals, and we do them too, but every once in a while we like to do something a little different, a little heavier.”

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is produced by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service Inc. in New York City.

Masks are suggested due to audience members’ proximity to one another and the length of the show, which has three acts. Hand sanitizer will be available.

Advance tickets are $16, $14 for ages and older, $11 for students. Add $2 for tickets at the door. To reserve, call 724-836-8000 or visit ggccevents.org.