The inevitability of death makes ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ evergreen. Watch it at the Walnut this season.

The only thing that’s always timely due to its inevitability, is death. That’s why Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, written in the mid-1950s, will never lose its relevance, said Bernard Havard, Walnut Street Theatre’s president and producing artistic director, who is directing the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama at the Walnut.

“One of them is about death, obviously, and it’s also about lying and also about love,” he said, speaking of the play’s main themes. “And it is also about what happens to a family when there is money [involved] and the pressures that come forward in families that have … loved each other for so long.”

In the play, the family patriarch is dying of cancer, but no one has told him or his wife. Meanwhile, his two sons and their spouses are already calculating what will happen to the family’s assets. Mendacity is everywhere.

Havard considers this play “one of the greatest plays ever written. It’s a classic. It’s a marvelous piece of construction.”

For him, one of the pleasures of directing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the opportunity to relive his memories of working with Williams, who died in 1983.

In 1978, Williams directed Tiger Tail, a play he cowrote, at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, where Havard was managing director.

Havard described Williams as a “simple human being” whose favorite wine was Mateus, a modestly priced rosé, and who required Havard to find him a hotel with a pool for his daily lap swims.

Havard also had to obtain a daily dose of Valium for Williams, which was procured from a board member who was a physician. Williams “was a very excitable man,” Havard said. “He needed to be calmed down.”

(Feb. 14-March 12, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Walnut Street Theatre, 825 Walnut St., 215-574-3550 or walnutstreettheatre.org)

The Negro Ensemble Company presents the world premiere of Mecca is Burning at the University of Pennsylvania. It looks at many of America’s current issues and challenging circumstances through the eyes of four Black families living in Harlem. The New York group, with a prestigious history, is this season’s artists-in-residence at Penn Live Arts. Denzel Washington and Phylicia Rashad, along with Philadelphia’s own Charles Fuller and Walter Dallas, are part of this company’s impressive alumni list.

The credits for Mecca is Burning include a crew of playwrights and poets — Cris Eli Blak, Karen Brown, Lisa McCree, Levy Lee Simon, and Mona R. Washington. Karen Brown directs.

Blak will appear at a Feb. 15 lunch at Kelly Writers House, an event that is also virtual. Info on both is available through Penn Live Arts.

(Feb. 15-18, “Mecca is Burning,” Negro Ensemble Company, Harold Prince Theatre, Annenberg Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3680 Walnut St., 215-898-3900 or pennlivearts.org)

Jeffrey L. Page, who has been Philadelphia Theatre Company’s artist-in-residence, is back in Philly , this time as choreographer and co-director of 1776, The Musical at the Forrest Theatre, in partnership with the Kimmel Cultural Campus.

The original premiered on Broadway in 1969, and this 2022 version is the second of two revivals. Page and co-director Diane Paulus have cast women, transgender, and nonbinary actors as the Founding Fathers.

“It’s an amalgamation of a bunch of cultures coming together and finding a way to call themselves a singular community,” Page said to The Inquirer last year.

(Through Feb. 26, “1776, The Musical,” Forrest Theatre, 1114 Walnut St., 215-893-1999 or kimmelculturalcampus.org)

Meet Me At Dawn, an American premiere, is the love story of two survivors who wash up on an island after a violent boating accident. Their characters are complicated and the play, with its misty set, includes a supernatural twist.

Inis Nua Theatre Co., which focuses on contemporary plays from Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, presents Meet Me at Dawn, written by Scottish playwright Zinnie Harris, who is well-known on the other side of the Atlantic.

(Feb. 15-March 5, “Meet Me at Dawn,” Inis Nua Theatre Co., Louis Bluver Theater at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., 215-454-9776 or inisnuatheatre.org)

The Ritz Theatre Co. presents The Color Purple, a musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Director Kyrus Keenan Westcott said in a statement that the play’s continued relevance “can be boiled down to the fact that it breaks the stigma surrounding the abuse of Black women in America.”

(Through Feb. 26, “The Color Purple,” Ritz Theatre, 915 White Horse Pike, Haddon Twp., 856-288-3500 or ritztheatreco.org)

When an Israeli violinist living in Amsterdam opens her mail, she finds a decades-old past-due gas bill from 1944. What does it mean? The four characters in Theatre Ariel’s production of Amsterdam try to figure it out, even as they disagree about everything — including how to talk about genocide.

(“Amsterdam,” Theatre Ariel, Feb. 18 at 191 Presidential Blvd., Bala Cynwyd; Feb. 19, Old City Jewish Art Center, 119 N. 3rd St.; Feb. 25 and 26, Temple Beth Hillel/Beth El, 1001 Remington Rd., Wynnewood. 610-667-9230 or theatreariel.org)

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