The Glass Menagerie | on stage from 11 September to 21 October |
The Glass Menagerie, a drama of great tenderness and poetic beauty, catapulted playwright Tennessee Williams to international fame in 1944. Drawn from Williams’ life, this memory play is a dream-like exploration of the universal themes of the elusiveness of truth, the necessity of forgiveness, and the power of memory.
Set during the 1930s, The Glass Menagerie tells the story of the Wingfield family through the narrative lens of Tom, a young man and aspiring writer longing to escape the gloomy St. Louis apartment he shares with his overbearing and histrionic mother, Amanda, and mentally fragile sister, Laura. Having been abandoned by her husband, the faded “Southern belle” Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor, or, as she puts it, a “gentleman caller”, for her daughter, whose physical handicap and crippling shyness have led her to drop out of both high school and a subsequent secretarial course, and who spends most of her time with her collection of little glass animals – the “glass menagerie”. Pressured by his mother to help find a caller for Laura, Tom invites Jim, an acquaintance from work, home for dinner. When he does arrive, however, the gentleman caller causes cracks to form in the delicate fantasies that have kept the fragile family going.
“The Glass Menagerie is one of the greatest plays ever written.” –Time Out
Presented by special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.
All plays of season 2023/2024: www.englishtheatre.at
