When the audience walked into the theatre, an actor was spray painting the wall of the stage, and smoke was being pumped into the air, a fitting start for an exceptional and anarchic evening of theatre.
Tennessee Williams’ classic play focuses on the Wingfields. Abandoned long ago by their father, the family are waiting on the promise of change, symbolised by the ‘gentlemen caller’ a figure who might come into the family’s life and marry the daughter, Laura (Eva Morgan), giving her ‘security’, allaying her mother’s (Sharon Small) fears, and allowing the son, Tom (Tom Varey), to be free of his obligations to them. What follows is a tender exploration of repressed desire.
Jay Miller’s direction is teeming with creative energy and takes an anarchic approach to space, wringing every possible surprise, perspective, and illusion out of The Yard’s large stage. Two sets of hanging wires are used to suggest the Wingfields’ house, which contains what appeared to be a kind of miniature of the town outside it. This, along with a few pieces of slid furniture and the glass menagerie itself complete Cécile Trémolières set. It is a rich set and allows for a lot of exploration. Laura is frequently set on a literal pedestal, a pouf set out in the living room. When she later sets her favourite glass figure on it in a moment of rare exploration and vulnerability, it is knocked off and broken.
This set is expertly lit by Sarah Readman. They made effective use of sudden bursts of light to move us to different places and times, or to hold us at an important memory. Their lighting of the centrally placed wardrobe, used brilliantly throughout as a hiding hole for Laura and as Amanda’s phone booth, was especially impressive, not least because of how difficult lighting it must have been. Likewise, on the first morning in the play, three large windows built into the side of the room are suddenly illuminated – something that was almost magical as they had been completely unnoticeable before the event.
In many ways all of this work from the creative team presents a challenge to a cast who must compete with the vividness on stage as well as grounding us and themselves in the story of their character. This is something Small succeeds in wonderfully and though Tom is the play’s narrator, it is really her performance which the whole story revolves around. She gives it context, strength, and meaning. To this Varey adds a fiery energy and momentum that capture’s Tom’s restlessness brilliantly. Morgan is especially successful in the crucial role of winning the hearts of the audience completely. It makes the courting of Jim O’Connor (Jad Sayegh), the gentlemen caller, incredibly compelling.
The staging can however get slightly lost in this creative fervour with some of the attention on the story itself becoming distracted as a result. For example, sound designer Josh Anio Grigg gives us a near constant wash of music that underscores a number of important scenes, especially early on. The music itself is interesting and builds off the fact their house is located near a dancehall, and yet it forces the actors to fight over the volume and gets in the way of the intricacies of Williams’ dialogue. This is never really a problem as such, but while the quality of the creativity on stage is never in question, I found myself wishing for moments of stillness and a more selective eye, if only to make what was on stage stand out more clearly.
But this is a show of serious invention and quality, and it delivers on themes of the play. Its anarchic style is a fitting send-off for The Yard as it closes the doors on its current, temporary, home and looks forward to a new building that opens in 2026. Speaking to those who sat around me there was a clear consensus: we hope the creative spirit of The Yard lives on in its new iteration. Theatre needs it.
Much like the magician Tom describes at the start of the play, the tricks of this production are very beautiful indeed; the truth is another matter, sometimes there in full force, at other times drifting just out of reach.
Glass Menagerie is running until the 10th of May – https://www.theyardtheatre.co.uk/events/the-glass-menagerie
Reviewer: Ralph Jeffreys
Reviewed: 11th March 2025
North West End UK Rating:
Rating: 4 out of 5.
