Cat on a Hot Tin Roof features motifs such as social mores, greed, superficiality, mendacity, decay, sexual desire, repression, and death.

The play was adapted as a film of the same name in 1958, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman as Maggie and Brick, with Ives and Madeleine Sherwood recreating their stage roles.

The party celebrates the birthday of patriarch Big Daddy Pollitt, "the Delta's biggest cotton-planter",[3] and his return from the Ochsner Clinic with what he has been told is a clean bill of health.

Brick, an aging football hero, infuriates her by ignoring his brother Gooper's attempts to gain control of the family fortune.

Maggie, Brick, Mae, Gooper, and Doc Baugh (the family's physician) decide to tell Big Mama the truth about her husband's illness, and she is devastated by the news.

Brick uses the word to express his disgust with the "lies and liars" he sees around him, and with complicated rules of social conduct in Southern society and culture.

Similar ideas are found in Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night", which Williams excerpted and added as an epigraph to his 1974 version.

[6] Additionally, in one of his many drafts,[7] in a footnote on Big Daddy's action in the third act, Williams deems Cat on a Hot Tin Roof a "play which says only one affirmative thing about 'Man's Fate': that he has it still in his power not to squeal like a pig but to keep a tight mouth about it.

[10] Kazan requested that Maggie be shown as more sympathetic, the dying Big Daddy make a reappearance, and Brick undergo some sort of moral awakening.

The cast also featured the southern blues duo Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry and had as Gazzara's understudy the young Cliff Robertson.

[12] Others from the original Broadway production included R. G. Armstrong as Doctor Baugh, Fred Stewart as Reverend Tooker, Janice Dunn as Trixie, Seth Edwards as Sonny, Maxwell Glanville as Lacey, Pauline Hahn as Dixie, Darryl Richard as Buster, Eva Vaughn Smith as Daisy, and Musa Williams as Sookey.

[13] A 1974 revival by the American Shakespeare Theatre featured Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea, Fred Gwynne, Kate Reid, and Charles Siebert.

The 1988 London National Theatre production, directed by Howard Davies, starred Ian Charleson, Lindsay Duncan, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, and Eric Porter.

[16] A revival in 1990 featured Kathleen Turner, who was nominated for a Tony for her performance as Maggie, though New York magazine called her "hopelessly lost ... in this limp production."

A 2003 revival for Belvoir St Theatre was directed by Simon Stone and starred Jacqueline McKenzie as Maggie, Ewen Leslie as Brick, and Marshall Napier as Big Daddy.

In 2011, the play was performed at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada, starring Maya O’Connell as Maggie and Gray Powell as Brick.

[21] The Young Vic's 2018 production, directed by Benedict Andrews and starring Sienna Miller as Maggie, Jack O'Connell as Brick, Colm Meaney as Big Daddy, Lisa Palfrey as Big Mama, Hayley Squires as Mae, Brian Gleeson as Gooper, Richard Hansell as Baugh, and Michael J. Shannon as Reverend, was filmed at the Apollo Theatre for National Theatre Live.

[23] In 2022, the Tennessee Williams Estate granted the production company Ruth Stage the right to perform the show Off-Broadway for the first time in the play's history.

[24] A London revival is scheduled to open at the Almeida Theatre in December 2024, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Margaret and Kingsley Ben-Adir as Brick.

Further casting includes Lennie James, Guy Burgess, Clare Burt, Seb Carrington, Derek Hagen, Ukweli Roach, and Ria Zmitrowicz.

[25][26] The big-screen adaptation was released by MGM in 1958 and starred Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Judith Anderson, and Jack Carson, with Burl Ives and Madeleine Sherwood reprising their stage roles.

[10] The Hays Code limited Brick's portrayal of sexual desire for Skipper and diminished the play's critique of homophobia and sexism.

[33] Williams was reportedly unhappy with the screenplay, which removed almost all the homosexual themes and revised the third act section to include a lengthy scene of reconciliation between Brick and Big Daddy.

In 1984, another TV version was produced by American Playhouse, starring Jessica Lange, Tommy Lee Jones, Rip Torn, Kim Stanley, David Dukes, and Penny Fuller.