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The Glass Menagerie

Published Tuesday 15 April 2008 at 13:05 by Natalie Anglesey

Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright, Tennessee Williams, described this work as his first quiet play, although Braham Murray’s new production is full of music.

It’s certainly the most personal play, by one of America’s foremost dramatists, mirroring his own situation as a young man haunted by a domineering mother and a mentally unbalanced sister.

Mark Arends plays Tom Wingfield as a flamboyant, chain-smoking neurotic teetering on the edge of the nervous breakdown Williams had in later life. Emma Hamilton, as his terminally shy, disabled sister Laura, comes into her own in the second half with the appearance of Jim O’Connor, the long-awaited gentleman caller.

At one time Williams called this play The Gentleman Caller and Andrew Langtree’s powerful performance, full of light and shade, bluster and sincerity, is the crux of the whole piece He breathes fresh air into their lives and his candlelit scene with Laura and their tender kiss are the highlights of the evening.

Brenda Blethyn plays Amanda, the mother of this dysfunctional family and embraces the role, not so much as a fading belle, but a robust matriarch, concerned for her family’s future while unconsciously destroying them. However the baggage of past performances meant the audience were desperate to laugh at the slightest excuse. Her entrance, dressed as a Southern belle, clutching her favourite flowers, which is so tragically heart-rending, was greeted with gales of laughter.

Perhaps a nervous cast drowned the subtlety which, thankfully, came later.

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