Synopses & Reviews
When it opened in Chicago in 1944, The Glass Menageriemarked a turning point in American theater and in the life of its then unknown author. Tennessee Williams’s elegiac masterpiece brought a radical new lyricism to Broadway—and today the tragedy, fragility, and tenderness of this “memory play” endure.
In a cramped St. Louis apartment the aging Southern belle Amanda Wingfield, long preoccupied by memories of gentlemen callers and a world that no longer exists, is energized by the dilemma of how to save what remains of her family. Her restless son Tom — factory worker, aspiring poet, and the narrator of the play — is swept up in Amanda’s comic and heartbreaking schemes to find Laura, his agonizingly shy and handicapped sister, a husband.
This new edition of The Glass Menageriecomes with an exciting introduction by the playwright Tony Kushner. Williams’s classic essay on the effect of swift and unexpected fame, “The Catastrophe of Success,” his original production notes, and a new essay on the autobiographical background of the play by the distinguished Williams scholar Allean Hale are also included.
Review
Seeing The Glass Menageriewas like stumbling on a flower in a junkyard—Williams had pushed language and character to the front of the stage as never before.
Review
"The revolutionary newness of . . . was in its poetic lift, but an underlying hard dramatic structure was what earned the play its right to sing poetically." Arthur Miller
Review
"With the advent of . . . Tennessee Williams emerged as a poet-playwright and a unique new force in theatre throughout the world." Lyle Leverich in Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams
Synopsis
was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor of , reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally." This edition of also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." The cover features the classic line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New Directions edition.
Synopsis
No play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's .
About the Author
Tennessee Williams(1911-1983) is the acclaimed author of many books of letters, short stories, poems, essays, and a large collection of plays, including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real,Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, and The Rose Tattoo.Tony Kushneris the author of over two dozen plays, including Angels in America, for which he received the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for the best play of 1993.