The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
Stripped right back production mesmerises
PAUL FOLEY recommends what he considers the best staging he has ever ween of the Tennessee Williams classic
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
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.
More from this author
PAUL FOLEY applauds a faultless musical that tells the tragic real-life story of working-class winners of the football pools
PAUL FOLEY is blown away by a Brazilian band at the top of their game
PAUL FOLEY examines how the Whitworth is attempting to engage with sexual minorites
Similar stories
‘There's outrage aplenty in this production but we never quite get to the dark night of the soul,’ writes WILL STONE
PAUL FOLEY applauds a faultless musical that tells the tragic real-life story of working-class winners of the football pools
SIMON PARSONS marvels at a production of Williams’s early masterpiece that transforms the play into a symbolic slow dance of tensions, fears and desires
PAUL FOLEY highly recommends a play that movingly addresses the fallout from a major industrial employer shutting up shop