#Play The Glass Menagerie
- Title: The Glass Menagerie
- Playwright: Tennessee Williams
- Genre: memory play
- Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics
- Performance: Broadway debut 31 March 1945
- Trivia: 1945 NY Drama Critics Circle Award Best American Play
- Wikipedia link: The Glass Menagerie
- List of Challenges 2019
- Monthly reading plan
- #20BooksOfSummer
- Actresses:
- Amanda Wingfield is one of the great
- roles written for older women for the stage.
- Many great actresses have played the part:
- Laurette Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Joanne Woodward,
- Maureen Stapleton Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris, and Jessica Lange.
- The most recent was May 2017 with Sally Field:
Quickscan:
- The Wingfield family is based on the plawrights family.
- Restless son Tom. (based on the playwright)
- Crippled sister Laura
- Manic mother Amanda.
- The entire play is Tom’s recollection
- …of his sister and mother
- as he has never been able to forget about them.
Dysfunctional family…falling apart
- Faded Southern belle (Amanda)
- having outlived the southern past.
- Amanda – Tom – Laura
- …characters tear each other apart.
- Setting:
- moved from the South to urban society
- searching for the American Dream
Themes:
- Illusion vs truth
- Parent (Amanda) not able to accept who her
- children (Tom, Laura) are
- …and what they will not be
- Appearance vs reality
- Success is dependent on appearance
- ….girls should be attractive to entertain gentlemen-callers
- Past vs present
- Fantasizing about the past – Amanda faded Southern belle)
- Running away from the past – Tom, aspiring poet, writer
- Unable to see past or future – Laura, detached from reality
- …her unicorn doesn’t even represent a realistic animal!
Life lesson:
- One can try to escape the past and one’s ties to family
- …. but the bonds are too strong’
- Tom has managed to escape the family but
- they still have a psychological hold on him.
- At the end of the play Tom says:
- “Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me,
- but I am more faithful than I intended to be!”
- Note:
- The troubled life of Rose Williams
- …haunts the works of her brother Tennessee.
- Williams was devoted to Rose and cared for her until his death.
- Rose is the model for the withdrawn, disabled “Laura Wingfield”
- …who seeks refuge in her
- …collection of glass animals in The Glass Menagerie.
Conclusion:
- Masterpiece!
- #MustRead
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