The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie is a play by Tennessee Williams. The play premiered in Chicago in 1944, and in 1945 won the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The Glass Menagerie was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights. The Glass Menagerie is accounted by many to be a biographical play about Williams life, the characters and story mimicking his own more closely than any of his other works. Williams would be Tom, his Mother, Amanda, and his sickly and disturbed sister Rose would be Laura.

Tennessee Williams

Synopsis

The play is set in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, during the Great Depression and deals with the troubled relationship between an aging mother, Amanda Wingfield, and her painfully shy daughter Laura Wingfield, as told by the son and brother, Tom Wingfield, who is supposedly relating events from memory. He states that the play is not completely realistic, because "memory takes much poetic license." In this "memory play", the time scheme moves freely between the past (the 1930s) and the present (1944-1945). (The action takes place in either 1935 or 1936, since it is "two years" after Chicago's Century of Progress World's Fair of 1933-34.)

Amanda is fixated on her idealized version of her Southern childhood and is the perfect example of the 'faded southern belle' about whom Williams often writes in plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire. She often recalls days when as many as seventeen gentleman callers would visit her. Her current life involves such sorrows as a complete reversal of fortune - her husband, described as a "telephone man who fell in love with long distance", abandoned the family when Tom and Laura were children.

Amanda has since made a meager living working in selling magazine subscriptions. She therefore suffers a withdrawal from reality (to a smaller extent than that suffered by Tom or Laura, but more heavily emphasized in the physical sense), yet is the most extroverted family member in the play. Laura has a physical handicap: she wore a brace in high school, and now has a slight limp. She has become cripplingly shy as a result. The outside world frightens her, and she prefers the comfort of her collection of glass animals and the sounds of her father's old Victrola records. Although Tom provides financial support, working long hours in a shoe warehouse (a job he thoroughly despises), Amanda sees Tom as a "selfish dreamer" who irresponsibly retreats into movies, alcohol, reading novels, and writing poetry instead of doing more to provide for the family.

Amanda soon discovers that Laura, instead of attending business college, dropped out after a few days. Laura pretended to go to the college, but wandered the streets, occasionally stopping by the local library instead. Sensing her mother's disappointment, Laura explains that she was frightened and embarrassed, becoming physically ill at her first typing test. Her hopes of Laura's employment dashed, Amanda resolves to find a suitable companion for Laura, fearing that she will become like the "barely tolerated spinsters" she recalls from her past. Laura is less enthusiastic, but nevertheless mentions a boy named Jim whom she liked in high school.

Meanwhile, Tom and Amanda's relationship grows even more strained, illustrated by a quarrel in scene 3. The fight is sparked by Amanda's returning one of Tom's D. H. Lawrence novels to the library because she sees it as obscene "filth". Here Tom threatens to leave for good referring to his father in a reluctant yet promising manner. Before he begins to leave the house he tells Amanda a sarcastic story of his life when he allegedly "goes to the movies." He tells of villainy, drug use and prostitution that would cause her to get not a moment's sleep without worry. The fight continues, and at the climax of the argument, Tom hurls his overcoat across the room and breaks some of Laura's glass animals; at the sound, she cries out as if in pain.

In the next scene, Tom apologizes for the fight, and Amanda asks him to find a clean-living man from the warehouse to meet Laura over dinner. Somewhat reluctantly, he does so, and in scene five announces that he has found one: an Irish man named Jim O'Connor. Ecstatic, Amanda interrogates Tom about his suitability and frantically prepares for his arrival, tidying the house and fussing over Laura's appearance. However, once Amanda mentions Jim's name, Laura immediately recognizes him as the boy she loved in high school and pales. Once he arrives at dinner, Laura is so nervous she can barely come to the dinner table. When she gets there, she becomes ill and has to be excused to the couch where she stays as the others finish dinner. After Tom and Amanda entertain Jim at dinner, Amanda leaves the room to do dishes, taking Tom with her, and leaving Jim alone with Laura.

During their conversation, Jim judges Laura as the victim of an inferiority complex, and advises her to see herself as "superior in some way," relating his own experience and goals for the future - in his case, the recent invention of television. Jim manages to coax Laura out of her shyness. She shows him her collection of glass, noting a unicorn as her favorite. Laura even agrees to dance with him after he offers. Inadvertently, Jim bumps the unicorn off the table, breaking its horn off; Laura says it is no trouble, imagining that it had an operation to feel less "freakish". Eventually, Jim kisses Laura; however, he quickly realizes this mistake and hurriedly explains that he is engaged to a girl named Betty, proceeding to expound on how this engagement has changed him through love. Laura, crushed, offers him the broken unicorn as a "souvenir".

Amanda returns and soon discovers Jim's engagement for herself. When Jim leaves, she blames Tom for the situation, and Tom futilely defends himself by saying that the factory is merely a place of employment and not a social outlet for him; furious, he leaves for good. As Amanda is shown comforting Laura, silently, Tom delivers a soliloquy, revealing that he was never fully able to abandon their memory. The play closes with an image of Laura blowing out the candles, leaving darkness.

Stage productions

Original productions, 1944-45

The Glass Menagerie was actually reworked material from one of Williams' short stories, "Portrait of a Girl in Glass". The play was first produced by Eddie Dowling and Louis J. Singer at the Civic Theatre in Chicago, on December 26, 1944. It premiered on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre on March 31, 1945, and moved to the Royale Theatre, with a combined run of 563 performances. It was awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play of the season.

• Amanda Wingfield -- Laurette Taylor
• Tom Wingfield -- Eddie Dowling
• Laura Wingfield -- Julie Haydon
• Jim O'Connor -- Anthony Ross

Revivals

The play has been revived on Broadway six times. The 1965 production, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, ran for 175 performances, and starred Maureen Stapleton (Amanda), Piper Laurie (Laura), Pat Hingle (Gentleman Caller), and George Grizzard (Tom).

A Circle in the Square Theatre revival in 1975 again starred Stapleton and Rip Torn as Tom, and ran for 77 performances.

A production opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on December 1, 1983 and ran for 92 performances. It starred Jessica Tandy as Amanda, Amanda Plummer as Laura, and Bruce Davison (Tom) and John Heard (Gentleman Caller).

The Roundabout Theatre production opened at the now-demolished Criterion Center Stage Right on November 15, 1994 and ran for 57 performances. Julie Harris stared as Amanda, with Calista Flockhart (Laura), Željko Ivanek (Tom), and Kevin Kilner (Gentleman Caller).

On March 22, 2005, a production opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and starred Jessica Lange (Amanda), Sarah Paulson (Laura), Christian Slater (Tom), and Josh Lucas(Gentleman Caller). The production ran for 120 performances and 29 previews.

A recent revival of The Glass Menagerie was a West End revival at the Apollo Theatre, and ended on 19 May, 2007. It ws directed by Rupert Gould and starred Jessica Lange as Amanda Wingfield.

Film and television adaptations

At least two movie versions of The Glass Menagerie have been produced, the first directed by Irving Rapper in 1950 , starring Gertrude Lawrence, Jane Wyman, Kirk Douglas, and Arthur Kennedy, and the second by Paul Newman in 1987, starring Joanne Woodward, John Malkovich, Karen Allen, and James Naughton. Williams characterized the former, which had an implied happy ending grafted onto it, as the worst adaptation of his work. It is not currently available on VHS or DVD.

There is also a TV adaptation by Anthony Harvey, broadcast on ABC on December 16, 1973, starring Katharine Hepburn, Sam Waterston, Michael Moriarty, and Joanna Miles. All four actors were nominated for Emmys, with Moriarty and Miles winning. An earlier television version, recorded on videotape, and starring Shirley Booth, was broadcast on December 8, 1966 as part of CBS Playhouse. Hal Holbrook played Tom and Pat Hingle played the Gentleman Caller. Booth was nominated for an Emmy for her performance as Amanda.

There is an Indian version of the movie, filmed in Malayalam, a regional language. The movie titled Akale (meaning Beyond), released in 2004, is directed by Shyamaprasad. Prithiviraj, Geethu Mohandas, Sheela and Tom George play the main characters.

Parodies

The Glass Menagerie was parodied by Christopher Durang in a short one-act entitled For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, in which Laura is replaced by a wimpy hypochondriac son named Lawrence, and the "gentleman caller" becomes a butch female factory worker with a hearing problem named Ginny.

Ryan Landry and The Gold Dust Orphans did a parody called The Pickaw Menagerie, set in a FEMA trailer in post-Katrina New Orleans, with Landry playing Amanda in an all-male cast.

Ten Directions Productions has created a show called Bouffon Glass Menajoree which parodies The Glass Menagerie in the Bouffon style of clowning. The show features a hunchbacked Tom who revels in his drinking, a self-destructive Laura who plays cutting games with her knife, and an obesely fat Amanda. The gentleman caller is played by an audience member. The show has toured to several festivals in the United States in 2006 & 2007.

External links

• Internet Broadway Database listing for all productions
• Study resource for writing about The Glass Menagerie
• Internet Movie Database listing for 1966 television production
• Bouffon Glass Menajoree
• Akale at IMDb