Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and again in the 1974 version. The ways in which humans deal with death are also at the focus of this play, as are the futility and nihilism some encounter when confronted with imminent mortality. 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. These lines are appropriate, as Thomas wrote the poem to his own dying father. Additionally, in one of his many drafts, in a footnote on Big Daddy's action in the third act, Williams deems "Cat on a Hot
That Good Night the light."" It opened at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford on 2 April 1996 with the following cast (in order of appearance): Ralph is a successful screenwriter, charming, cantankerous, rude and a bully; in his time an avid womaniser and completely selfish. Now in his seventies and terminally ill, he has two final missions: to be reconciled to his long-abandoned son Michael and secretly to ensure he is not a burden to his younger, devoted and second wife Anna as he goes "into that good night". But when Michael arrives at the beautiful Tuscan villa for their first meeting in