The main draw for many people is the casting of Amy Adams in her West End debut as Amanda, and, on press night, I found her performance a little one-dimensional, especially in the first half. The Glass Menagerie is Laura’s collection of glass animals she has collected while secluded from the outside world, they represent her family, hopes and dreams and have pride of place, possibly a little too much attention-stealing in its vast glass cabinet. It’s a beautifully created production, and there is no need for meta theatre to be enforced on the play, Williams gives us that in his superb opening monologue, embracing the fact that this is a memory play, the actors greeting each other on stage before the show begins. Whilst the tale of faded Southern Belle Amanda, trying desperately to fix her daughter, Laura, up with a gentleman caller lacks the melodrama and histrionics of later plays, there is power in its gentleness. Tennessee Williams’s first hit is given an inventive new production directed by Jeremy Herrin that gently finds new layers due to some inventive casting. With the West End production of The Glass Menagerie, which starred Amy Adams, having just closed – the Royal Exchange is now ready to take on the masterpiece that catapulted Tennessee Williams to fame.Paul T Davies reviews Tennessee Williams’s memory play The Glass Menagerie starring Amy Adams at the Duke Of York’s Theatre London. He has curated a playlist for the show, with artists such as Frank Ocean, Radiohead and Whitney Houston, to name a few, putting the theatre-goer in the sonic mood to relish Williams in Manchester.

With a director familiar to the Royal Exchange Theatre, Atri Banjerjee has worked in the role of Associate Director since 2017, with The Glass Menagerie being his directorial debut. It was said that any money he made from the play he put towards his sister’s care, which became increasingly necessary as her illness required round-the-clock care. The Glass Menagerie has similar themes, if not seen as more autobiographical of Willliams’ life itself – his own younger sister was a muse for Laura and his own mother for the character of Amanda. Streetcar shows the sincere difficulty harboured when families are married into vastly different families.

The Glass Menagerie, itself, was staged at the Royal Exchange back in 2008. Tennessee Williams is known to secondary-school students for A Streetcar Named Desire – which the Royal Exchange adapted in 2016, starring Maxine Peake it’s one of the most memorable productions in the theatre’s history.

Siblings, Tom and Amanda, and their mother, Laura, are the characters at the centre of the drama here – a suitor for Laura could secure a chance at another future but at a certain cost. Intimate and intense, the memory play explores the complex web of love, loyalty and trauma that bind families together. The Glass Menagerie is a poetic and bruising portrayal of a family on the brink of change.

Amy adams the glass