The Glass Menagerie overview: An beautiful manufacturing conveying genuine emotion | Theatre | Entertainment | EUROtoday

Rose Theatre, Kingston till May 4 (UK Tour till June 1)

Tickets: 020 8174 0090 (stageberry.com)

Tennessee Williams’ autobiographical play requires delicate dealing with.

Experimental in kind, with a narrator addressing the viewers in addition to participating within the unfolding drama, it’s as emotionally fragile because the glass animals collected by the younger, disabled Laura Wingfield who represents Williams’ personal sister.

First seen in Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre in 2022, Atri Bannerjee’s stylised manufacturing will get a well-deserved revival.

Above the round, tilted stage an enormous neon signal declaring ‘PARADISE’ revolves slowly, promoting the presence of the dance corridor reverse the Wingfield residence in addition to offering an ironic touch upon the occasions beneath it.

As Tom Wingfield (Kasper Hilton-Hille) informs us that it is a reminiscence play, he steps again into the previous the place his mom Amanda (Geraldine Somerville) and sister Laura (Natalie Kimmerling) wrestle to maintain their heads above water.

Amanda’s disappointments at life’s vicissitudes are targeted on the shy and internalised Laura and she or he persuades Tom to ask a possible suitor house from his warehouse job the place he’s nicknamed ‘Shakespeare’ resulting from his literary aspirations.

The ‘gentleman caller’, Jim (Zacchaeus Kayode) gives hope however in the end emotional chaos.

Somerville gives a extra beneficiant interpretation of Amanda than regular and presents her former Southern belle picture as an inducement to Laura to find her personal attract reasonably than competing along with her daughter.

Dialing down the bitterness of failure permits the characters to convey genuine emotion and keep away from caricature. Consequently, Williams’ recollections come throughout as a tribute to his household reasonably than a critique and it’s all the extra transferring for it.

Together with Lee Curran’s atmospheric lighting, Giles Thomas’ sound design (with abrupt bursts of microphone-augmented dialogue) and a fantasy sequence repurposed from Dirty Dancing, Banerjee’s interventions are solely in step with Williams personal experimentation.

An beautiful manufacturing.