Ben Madilynn
A new production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is coming to London’s Almeida theatre, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones.
The Olivier-winning director Rebecca Hucknell will be leading the production, marking the third adaptation of Tenessee Williams’ work that she has staged. As well as Summer and Smoke in 2018, last year Hucknell directed A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Edgar-Jones’ Normal People co-star, Paul Mescal.
Kingsley Ben-Adir, whose oeuvre of work includes High Fidelity and the Bob Marley biopic One Love, will star opposite Edgar-Jones, as well as the esteemed British actor Lennie James.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which saw Williams win a Pulitzer Prize for drama, is set in America’s deep south in the 1950s. On one sweltering evening, a family assembles to throw a birthday party for Big Daddy – however, tensions rise and rifts are laid bare. Edgar-Jones will play exasperated wife Maggie, Ben-Adir stars as Brick, while James will be the family’s formidable patriarch.
The play marks Edgar-Jones’ return to theatre work. The 26-year-old previously starred in The Reluctant Fundamentalist in 2017, and Albion in 2020 – the latter of which was also at the Almeida Theatre.
More recently, Edgar-Jones has focused on film work, having starred in Where the Crawdads Sing and Twisters. She is also set to lead in On Swift Horses, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar ahead of the London Twisters premiere, Edgar-Jones confessed she’s become more confident in her sartorial choices as she’s gotten older.
“I wish I could tell my younger self, who just wore any old thing in the wardrobe on Zoom, that those pictures would be on the internet forever,” she said. “I really love dressing up, I love fashion and playing around with style, and I think I am becoming more and more confident with pushing it but still feeling like myself.”
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens on 10 December and runs until 1 February. Further information can be found on the Almeida Theatre website.
