Few plays have delved as deep into the world of frustrated ambition as The Glass Menagerie, the play that launched Tennessee Williams’ career.

Its locus is pre-World War II St Louis, Missouri, and the Wingfield family, where no-one is satisfied. Tom, in his early 20s and working a warehouse job he despises, dreams of escape. His mother, Amanda, abandoned by her husband, relives her glory days as a Southern belle and worries incessantly about the marriage prospects of her daughter Laura. The latter, hyper-conscious of a physical impediment and made overwhelmingly anxious by the world, has retreated into tending the collection of small glass objects that gives the play its title. [More]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

The veteran team of Colin McColl (Director) and Tony Rabbit (Set & Lighting Design), with Nic Smillie-Starling (Costume Design), John Gibson (Sound Design & Composition) and an ideal cast (of whom more later) launch Circa Theatre’s 50^th Anniversary year with a minimalist and exquisitely executed production of The Glass Menagerie.

Thomas Lanier Williams III, known to the world as Tennessee Williams, was 33 and had written seven plays before he developed his yet-to-be-published autobiographical short story, Portrait of a Girl in Glass, into the play that liberated him from the menial jobs he’d been doing to sustain himself.

“The play premiered in Chicago on 26 December 1944,” Wikipedia tells us. “After a shaky start, it was championed by Chicago critics Ashton Stevens and Claudia Cassidy, whose enthusiasm helped build audiences so the producers could move the play to Broadway where it won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1945. The Glass Menagerie was Williams’ first successful play; he went on to become one of America’s most highly regarded playwrights.”

As a memory play, looking back a decade or so to the Depression years when his narrator, Tom Wingfield, still lived in a St Louis, Missouri tenement with his mother Amanda and sister Laura, The Glass Menagerie finds all three caught in a bind that mirrors the Williams’ own circumstances.

Deserted by a husband who worked for a telephone company and “fell in love with long distance”, Amanda, a faded southern belle, has devoted herself to preparing her children for a better future. Her daughter, Laura, who suffered from pleurisy as a child, is physically weak and mentally fragile. Having dropped out of school then secretarial college, she spends her days tending the tiny glass animals in her menagerie. Son Tom works in a shoe warehouse for low wages, escapes most nights to the movies and often comes home drunk in the early hours of the morning. He feels unable to leave home, more for Laura’s sake than his mother’s.

It is the visit of a fabled ‘Gentleman Caller’ for Laura, at the behest of Amanda and facilitated by Tom, that brings the drama to its climax and unforeseen denouement.

We now know that Tennessee Williams was gay and in a relationship with a young dancer called Kip when he wrote this play, that his sister Rose, (mis)diagnosed as schizophrenic (we’d probably call it Autism now), had been lobotomised and institutionalised, and that a percentage of the royalties of several of his most successful plays would subsequently pay for her care. But in the early to mid 1930s, while we can read Tom’s nocturnal escapades as including visits to necessarily clandestine gay clubs, Laura’s neurodivergence was far from being understood and remained so throughout their lives. (Wiki also suggests, “The devastating effects of Rose’s treatment may have contributed to Williams’s alcoholism and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates.”)

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve,” is Tom’s opening line. “But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you an illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

Simon Leary brings an air of objectivity to the older Tom while seamlessly reverting to the younger would-be dutiful son and devoted brother whose frustrations inevitably erupt into anger in the substantive scenes of recollection.

Amanda’s vain – in both senses of the word – attempts to maintain social and good Christian standards at home, compels empathy in Hera Dunleavy’s ultimately poignant rendition. She also finds comedy in such moments as the phone calls to remind women their magazine subscriptions are overdue – the only hint we get of how she earns an income – and when she tries to recapture her lost youth by flirting with The Gentleman Caller.

In subtle ways that draw us wholeheartedly into her states of being, newcomer (to Circa), Ashley Harnet, manifests Laura’s vulnerability in her ‘real’ world and total absorption in the imaginary world of her menagerie. The way she navigates the emotional rollercoaster of the impending then actual visit from The Gentleman Caller is mesmerising. From the breakthrough moment of self-esteem in front of the mirror to her howl of utter despair (I won’t reveal why), she gifts us insights into the hidden world of neurodivergence.

The much-heralded Gentleman Caller promises to be a catalyst for change in the lives of all three Wingfields. Jim O’Connor was in the same high school class as Laura and now works as a shoe shipping clerk in the same warehouse as Tom. Having excelled in sport (basketball), music and drama (Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance) at school, Jim’s life plateaued somewhat and now he is working hard at night school (electrical engineering and public speaking) to improve himself and his prospects. Jackson Burling captures every dimension of him to the proverbial tee.

Jim’s interactions with Tom and Amanda bring new insights into both characters but it’s his candle-lit scene with Laura that has us leaning forward, desperate to see it all work out. Williams has skilfully laid the groundwork for this relationship to flourish and when Laura comes out of her shell, we have every reason to believe it will.

This is where Tom’s promise of a magical blend of truth and illusion comes to the fore. Enough said – you will have to see it to experience the outcome.

Tony Rabbit’s programme note speaks of the way his set design recalls and honours the original Circa space where he and McColl collaborated on a production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1993/94). That may resonate for some in the audience but for me, the large ‘X’ that replicates the building’s reinforcement against earthquakes speaks simultaneously of denial, multiplication and the spot where treasure may be found.

A long white wall is punctuated by a small doorway to the kitchen and rest of the apartment, and a large portal to a dark abyss where images of the past and – at the end – what follows, are briefly illuminated. The lighting throughout is subtly judicial, not least when dressed-for-the-occasion Laura finds herself in the mirror.

The naturalistic details once beloved of sets for plays of the era are jettisoned for the few furnishings and props that Tom recalls, given his focus – and ours – is on the people and their relationships. Because narrator Tom mentions, in the epilogue, tiny glass bottles he has recently seen in shop windows, they become the titular glass menagerie, fastidiously organised by Laura. And we happily believe one is a unicorn – until it’s not.

The muted tones of Nic Smillie-Starling’s costume choices for housebound Amanda and Laura, and Tom’s black, white and grey street clothes, are impactfully contrasted with Laura’s dress for the big occasion and Jim’s more colourful attire.

Tom’s assertion that memory always comes with music informs John Gibson’s compositions and sound design, which range from almost imperceptible tinkling to evocations of dance hall music of the Depression era. The two dance sequences, by the way, are standouts. And Marshall Rankin operates the tech so well, we barely notice it.

Reviving a classic is always linked to its current relevance. The financially straitened circumstances of the Wingfields, the impediments to living authentically in the face of repressive forces, and the looming threat of yet another war, all resonate in 2026.

That said, I do feel disappointed that a New Zealand classic was not chosen for this spot. In all its 50 years, Circa has never produced a multicast Bruce Mason play, for instance. During his long tenure as Artistic Director of the Auckland Theatre Company, Colin McColl directed highly acclaimed revivals of The Pohutukawa Tree (2009) and Awatea (2012) with cast sizes of 12 and 10 + 5 extras, respectively. It’s sad that now a choice had to be made that was largely driven by cast size. Can we rationalise that, as with the style of this excellent production, less is more?

Photos by Natasha Halliday

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer