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.

All four actors deliver a masterclass in acting. Joshua James is exceptional in the role of Tom. A performance full of pathos that is, at times, truly heartbreaking.

In 1989 Geraldine Somerville played Laura at the Exchange. Thirty three years later she is back playing her Mother Amanda, the one time Southern Belle who is desperately trying to regain some past glory. Hers is an astonishing performance, full of brash Southern entitlement yet cloaked with sickening fear for the future in a rapidly changing world.
 
Laura is played by Rhiannon Clements who gives us a wonderfully nuanced young woman at odds with a world she neither understands nor fits into. Eloka Ivo is excellent as Jim, the “gentleman caller.” Although only appearing towards the end of the play, his role is pivotal in giving Laura a glimpse of a possible future.
 
This reviewer has seen many productions of The Glass Menagerie over the years, some of which were very good, but this production towers above anything seen before. The themes in Williams’s play have as much resonance today as when it was written back in 1944 but ultimately a play’s success turns on the author’s words and language.

This exceptional production has not only paid homage to a great writer but has, despite the subject matter, shown us that The Glass Menagerie is an extremely beautiful play.

Runs to October 8 2023. Box office: 0161 833 9833, royalexchange.co.uk