Scarlett Johansson's Cat Nip: Star to Headline Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Broadway Revival

The Cat's out of the bag; Hollywood vixen is hitting the boards again

By Josh Grossberg Sep 20, 2012 4:36 PMTags
Scarlett JohanssonAndreas Rentz/Getty Images

She's the Cat's meow, all right.

Three years after making her Broadway debut, Scarlett Johansson is coming back to the Great White Way to star in a revival of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The 27-year-old thesp will play Maggie "the cat," while Benjamin Walker (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) will essay the part of her drunken husband Brick in a story about the downward spiral of a wealthy Southern family in Mississippi.

Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman famously portrayed the characters in an acclaimed 1958 big-screen adaptation.

Veteran Irish actor Ciaran Hinds has been tapped to play Brick's ailing father and the clan's patriarch, Big Daddy, while stage veteran Debra Monk will play Big Mama.

Johansson's first Broadway stint came in 2009 when she headlined the Arthur Miller drama A View From the Bridge opposite Liev Schreiber and scored a Tony Award for her efforts.

This new production, which is being directed by Rob Ashford, is just the latest of many revivals of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The last one was staged in 2008 with an all-black cast featuring Anika Noni Rose and Terrence Howard as Maggie and Brick respectively and James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad as Big Daddy and Big Mama.

The ScarJo-led Cat On a Hot Tin Roof is scheduled to begin previews at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Dec. 18 and open on Jan. 17, 2013.