The Glass Menagerie @ Liverpool Playhouse

Review by Jennifer Tsai Lee | 15 Oct 2015

The Glass Menagerie is, arguably, Tennessee Williams’ most autobiographical play, and this Headlong/Liverpool Everyman/West Yorkshire Playhouse co-production is charged with an emotional and poetic intensity from the beginning.

Described as ‘a memory play’ by the narrator, Tom, The Glass Menagerie – here ably directed by Ellen McDougall – explores the tenuous boundaries between fantasy and reality and the tensions within a family in 1930s America.

Greta Scacchi delivers a stellar performance as Amanda, an ageing Southern belle who simultaneously revels in tales of her former glories and cajoles her children, Tom and Laura, about their futures. Scacchi brilliantly captures the neurotic wildness, tenderness and comic tragedy of the matriarch.

Tom Mothersdale is excellent in expressing the frustrations of the troubled son Tom, who works in a shoe factory while aspiring to be a poet, and Eric Kofi Abrefa as Jim, the gentleman caller, endows his role with charm and charisma.

The second half of the play is especially poignant, focusing on Jim’s visit to the family's shabby St Louis apartment as a potential suitor to Laura, the painfully shy daughter (played by Erin Doherty) who spends all her time with her glass menagerie. Wearing a clumpy platform shoe on one foot to symbolise Laura's physical impediment, Doherty's performance conveys both the awkwardness and fragility of the character.

The staging is minimalist, reflecting the claustrophobic domestic setting and the bleakness of the characters’ existence as they struggle for a better life.

Overall, this is a moving interpretation of Williams’ play – lingering afterwards, as in Tom’s words, ‘like bits of a shattered rainbow.’


The Glass Menagerie runs at Liverpool Playhouse until 31 October 2015, £12-25

everymanplayhouse.com/whats-on/glass-menagerie