Theater News

Ashley Judd Gets Her Claws Into Cat

Ashley Judd
Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd (as Maggie), Jason Patric (as Brick), and Ned Beatty (as Big Daddy) will star in a new Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s 1955 classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The limited-engagement production will be directed by Anthony Page (A Doll’s House, Heartbreak House, and Inadmissable Evidence); it is scheduled to begin previews at The Music Box on October 9 and to open officially on November 2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, tells the story of a Southern family torn apart during a birthday celebration in honor of their patriarch.

Judd was seen on Broadway in Picnic and has starred in such films as The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Double Jeopardy, and Simon Birch. Patric, who will be making his Broadway debut in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, has appeared on screen in Your Friends and Neighbors, Sleepers, and The Lost Boys. Beatty played Big Daddy in a London production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and received an Olivier Award nomination for his performance; he has also been seen on stage in the national tour of Show Boat and on film in Radioland Murders, Prelude to a Kiss, Network, All the President’s Men, and Deliverance.