National Theatre Live: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.

The story of several friends in New York City facing financial poverty, homophobia, AIDS, and, of course, rent.

On the brink of turning 30, a promising theater composer navigates love, friendship and the pressure to create something great before time runs out.

Harold is celebrating a birthday, and his friend Michael has drafted some other friends to help commemorate the event. As the evening progresses, an unexpected guest shows up, the alcohol flows, the knives come out, and dormant and unspoken emotions are unleashed.

Actress Myrtle Gordon is a functioning alcoholic who is a few days from the opening night of her latest play, concerning a woman distraught about aging. One night a car kills one of Myrtle's fans who is chasing her limousine in an attempt to get the star's attention. Myrtle internalizes the accident and goes on a spiritual quest, but fails to finds the answers she is after. As opening night inches closer and closer, fragile Myrtle must find a way to make the show go on.

The story of the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s, taking an unflinching look at the nation's sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fight to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city and nation in denial.