STEVE JOHNSON speaks to DJ and singer/songwriter Mark Radcliffe
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Stripped right back production mesmerises
PAUL FOLEY recommends what he considers the best staging he has ever ween of the Tennessee Williams classic
MASTERCLASS IN ACTING: (L to R) Eloka Ivo as Jim, Rhiannon Clements as Laura and Geraldine Somerville as Amanda
[Marc Brenner] 
JAMES WALSH takes advantage of an evening of comedy snippets to pick out which clowns will make it in Edinburgh
MAYER WAKEFIELD is swept up by the tale of the south London venue where music forged alliances across race, class and identity
MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds Rosamund Pike’s punchy and tragic portrayal of a multi-tasking mother and high court judge
FIONA O CONNOR recommends an unflinching depiction of child sexual abuse and its aftershocks, set in a working-class Liverpool family
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The Glass Menagerie
Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester
IF ONLY Tennessee Williams could have seen this magnificent production of The Glass Menagerie he would have died a happy man.
In 2019 Atri Banerjee was a trainee director and staged a fine Hobson’s Choice at the Royal Exchange. With this production he has grown into a mature, confident director with immense skill and a great vision.
Williams’s play premiered in 1944 but is set in the ’30s. Poverty, tension and desperation permeate the Wingfield family. The play is narrated by the son Tom, a young man full of pent-up frustration.
Angry at his role as the family breadwinner, angry at an overbearing mother, angry at his thwarted ambition to be a writer. Overlying this anger is his love for and guilt about his sister Laura who is a disturbed and fragile young woman.
In some director’s hands The Glass Menagerie can become overbearing and complex but Banerjee has the foresight to strip it right back, leaving Williams’s beautiful poetic language to his excellent cast.
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