Moving from "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder to "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams proved to be a very smooth transition. Both feature a narrator/participant, a fourth wall breaking provider of exposition. Thornton Wilder "Our Town" was written in 1938, "The Glass Menagerie" in 1944 so I wouldn't be at all surprised if I found out Williams was influenced by Wilder's play. They had the same initials after all... could they possibly have been the one person? No they couldn't, I'm just tangenting to entertain myself. Which I should stop doing because I'm TRYING to keep these blogs smaller so they don't chew up so much of my time.
The story
First of all, while it's true of all of the seminal and influential playwrights I've reviewed to date that they give greatly expanded stage directions and scene summaries, I think Williams takes the cake. He writes lengthy but gorgeous, almost poetic prose to describe the scenery and backstory of characters, the depth of that is perhaps lost on audiences who haven't read the script. It's an encouragement for directors and actors to recreate the vision he has, and I'm sure many try. I think it makes for a fuller understanding of the play as the playwright envisioned it (and I'm very Team Playwright when it comes to delivering visions), but again, you'd miss those written embellishments if you only saw the play.
The Wingfield family is a family that, each in their own ways, wish to escape the life they lead.
Tom, who works at a shoe factory (is this an allegorical element about his father, and himself, walking away? You decide), is a growing lad with all of the growing pains that come with it. He wishes to be a writer but feels stifled by his circumstances and escapes when he can to the cinema to see movies.
Tom lives with his mother, Amanda, an ageing southern belle originally from Mississippi, who always seems to be on the edge of saying "I do declare" or sipping a mint julip. She endless recounts her popularity as a young single woman and her repetition of her former status and memories is her way of escaping her reality. She feels her life now is lesser than the one she grew up in, which she wants not only for herself but also for her kids. As a result she can be quite demanding and judgemental. But her devotion to them, which is occasionally overlooked and unappreciated by the children, sadly leaves her resenting them at times (she says as much in Scene 2).
Also in the house is his sister, a shy and very anxious young woman who is very self conscious about her limp and how she presents publicly. For her escape she owns a menagerie of animals made of glass, inanimate friends that she can focus on... her favourite of which is the unicorn, which she sees as beautiful for it's uniqueness and differences from the other glass horses and other animals... a positive spin on how she feels less beautiful for her own differences.
Tom's father deserted the family some 16 years before the start of the play and his absence is keenly remembered and noted, as attested to by his framed photo displayed on their living room wall.
Amanda continues to relive her past, remembering how she was a very popular belle of the ball with many gentleman callers (the original name of the play), and she wishes the same for her daughter. I'm going to circle back to the male callers aspect in a little while. But, while Amanda is a large, presence commanding character, quick to tell both her children of their faults, she is also keen to set up her kids, for the future, especially evident in her trying to find a suitor for Laura.
They are essentially a family making the best of their situation, escaping in their own ways.
[Spoilers]
After much prompting from his mother, Tom asks a work friend, Jim, to have dinner with the family one night. Despite genuinely wanting suitors to attend her daughter, Amanda steals the attention, seemingly wishing to show that she is still the most popular girl, although stealing the attention may not be the correct description as anxiety-ridden Laura stays in her room and feigns sickness.
A blackout throughout the course of the night, caused by Tom not paying the electricity bill, leaves Laura and Jim together. At first painfully unresponsive, Laura becomes more talkative and even admits to seeing Jim several times in a play, returning to get his autograph that she routinely lacked the nerve to approach him for.
Possibly prideful and emboldened from the recognition and distant fan worship, Jim becomes more engaged with Laura, telling he that she is attractive, and that her limp is minor, and that she should stop feeling inferior to people. he asks her up to dance, kisses her cheek but in the dancing accidentally knocks over the glass unicorn, her prized possession, and breaks it's horn off. She covers her sadness and gives him the hornless unicorn... equal parts a thoughtful gesture but also acceptance that it is no longer special.
From this point, Jim regauges his interest, telling Laura she is like a sister, that his feelings to her are brotherly, and confides that he is actually engaged, and that he must go. Finding out that her son had brought home an engaged man infuriates Amanda, and her fury proves to be the final straw that inspires Tom to leave his family as his father had, finishing the play on a wistful and more bitter than sweet note.
The versions I saw
Unlike Becht's work, Williams main plays seem to be in constant rotation and there are a number of versions you can access for free or for cheaps.
The first version I saw was a staged by the Cornerstone Theatre Company in 2025. It's actually a very respectable version. No actors names are provided, so I'll just refer to them as the characters. The mother in this version plays Amanda as a very southern, a middle aged woman. Big, brassy and attention seeking. The actor playing Tom seems a bit uncomfortable (even moreso than the role calls for), the person playing Jim more confident, and I thought the young woman playing Laura was a stand out. Her subtle shift from nervous anxiety to softly spoken and much more engaging is slow and nuanced. It's a good rendition of the play, although the music used and the way in which it's used is interruptive and annoying rather than serving the production.
Also (and here's a segue) the cigarettes used, presumably fake, are long, massive strange looking things. Here's why it's a segue. Many writers love to use smoking in their plays as short hand to characterisation. My favourite Australian crime writer, Peter Corris, has people lighting up on every second page as do many writers I like. I'm not a smoker, although I can handle the mentions in a story, but if it's that frequent it's disruptive and feels like lazy stereotyping and mood creation. The frequency of the smoking, the weird looking smokes and the actors apparent discomfort with either smoking or just smoking these particular cigarettes destroyed some of my disbelief suspension.
The other version I saw was the 1987 film directed ironically by Paul Newman (ironic, if you count the fact he played the narrator/character in 2004 production of the last play I reviewed - "Our Town"). Newman's wife, the tragically underutilised Joanne Woodward as Amanda, who plays it a bit more serious and a fair bit less broadly southern than the other version, and very delicately and sympathetically when Tom turns on her and berates her. Karen Allen (yep, Indiana Jones, Starman, Animal House etc) plays a frail and quiet version of Laura and, quietly, acts as the spine of the story. And, in one of his earlier films before he become much imitated and parodied, John Malkovich stars as Tom in an alternately subtle, sweet and gentle then angry, richly dramatic and sarcastic Tom.
There are other versions, and it is handy to see a stage version as that's how the script was designed, but this film version helped my understanding of the play considerably.
My thoughts
It's a well-crafted story. I particularly liked how some elements are left to the audience to decide. Did Tom actually go to the movies very often, or to bars as seemed more likely? Did Laura have polio, and maybe even ASD? Did Tom not pay the electrical bills because he was saving money to leave? Was Amanda's clear flirting with Jim just falling back on old habits and filling in for the absent Laura, or would she have seized Jim for herself at Laura's expense if he seemed interested? Was Jim really ever engaged or did he pull that out as an escape strategy? I like there is room for the audiences minds and assessments to wander.
Despite this being autobiographically inspired, certainly some elements are exaggerated, edited or merged from Williams' own experiences. "The Glass Menagerie" was clearly a passion project for him, starting life as a heavily autobiographical short story "Portrait of a Girl in Glass", before being repurposed as the play "The Gentleman Caller", and then finally expanded into it's final form as a full length play.
Williams coined the phrase 'memory play' to describe it, and even have his character/narrator Tom (a not-at-all veiled approximation of Williams, who was christened Thomas at birth before taking on Tennessee as a pen name) explain what that is. In describing this method of story-telling, Tom compares it to the work of a stage magician... "He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."
For all of that, I didn't really get a new feel for a `memory play'. Maybe upon greater study that will come to me, but on a first run through, it seemed like a play. Perhaps the "truth in the form of a pleasant illusion" is a disclaimer by Williams that come of this has been heightened, exaggerated, left our, merged together or made up. Yet I feel that's the case with any story that is autobiographical, or semi-autobiographical. That's my way of saying that I don't feel I know any better what is meant be a `memory play' than I did before hand.
But it's a good story, and it's enjoyable, and it's well written (as I said before, including the bits the audience doesn't get to read). I did like the deployment of the narrator/character device, used sparingly and a good connector and commentator between bits. The story itself is small, in that it doesn't seek to comment on the world, or human nature to any great extent, just a well-written tale that some/many folk will find familiar and accessible.
I think I struggled a bit, and it's not a big deal and it might just eb a case of being from a different time... I struggled with the concept of gentleman callers. And not the concept per se, so much as Amanda's expectations that there should be a regular stream of them. Was this a common thing? And how would they know to visit? Not from Laura who is essentially a shut in. I bring this up because Amanda seems a bit judgemental about it... and a bit boastful at how much better she was at attracting gentleman callers. Not a major point, but just something that isn't a thig today, and may not have been in Amanda's later years either.
But back to the play. It's another very popular play that many famed actors have beaten a path to get to. That must count for something. It's very much an actor's play, and I could see local actors keen to bring it to stage locally.
Again I liked this play, I liked the closeness of family conversations and frustrations. That's not a criticism, just some plays hit more than others. I thought the writing was wonderful, both the background descriptions and engaging monologues, and with this his most personal story out of the way, I look forward to what fresh ideas he has next.
Materials accessed:
- "The Glass Menagerie" - script (1944). Available at many online sources including at Weebly.
- "The Glass Menagerie" - flm (1987). Freely available on Youtube(i)..
- "The Glass Menagerie" - filmed production (2025). Freely available on Youtube (ii).
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