The Glass Menagerie – Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
Thomas 'Tennessee' Williams is widely regarded as one of the great American playwrights, the quality and extent of his output in the middle of the last century ensuring that his work still continues to form a staple diet for professional and amateur theatre all over the world. The Royal Exchange have chosen his first (and most autobiographical) play to kickstart its Autumn/Winter season, and after recent upheavals and some very odd programming decisions by this Mancunian institution, it is a welcome and sparkling return to form.
'The Glass Menagerie' is famously a 'memory play' told from the flawed perspective of the narrator Tom (Joshua James), unpacking his tense relationship with Mother Amanda Wingfield (Geraldine Somerville) and sister Laura (Rhiannon Clements) as they struggle to ...