The Glass Menagerie

The first thing you notice is the wallpaper. It says ‘1930s America’ most of the time, but in the middle there’s a giant portrait of a handsome man that has started to peel from the wall and, in a remarkable effect, collect in a large puddle on the floor. It’s part of a brilliant set design by Grace Deacon that includes a large outside fire escape and a tiny all-glass toy set, the menagerie of Tennessee Williams’ title. 

This is the play that blasted off the career of the famed writer. Starting in Chicago in 1944, it went on to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award the following year. Too bad that he had revealed his histrionic mother and mentally fragile sister: from that moment Williams’ play-writing career was away!

The man on the wallpaper – in a normal production seen in a large picture frame - is the absent father, gone for at least 15 years, still missed by his wife Amanda (Blazey Best), who scrapes a living selling magazine subscriptions. Her self-delusion and inability to see the world around her is painful.

Also in this shaky residence is their two children in the 20s, Laura (Bridie McKim), a crippled, intensely shy girl with a devotion to her tiny menagerie, and Tom (Danny Ball) who, dissatisfied with his monotonous warehouse job, goes to the Flicks every spare moment, writes poetry and plans to escape, any time soon, to the merchant marines.