THE GLASS MENAGERIE is Tennessee Williams’ seminal work. This play was not only
a piece that opened the door of fame and fortune for the playwright, it also set the stage, so to
speak, for the recurring themes and character types that appear in many of his future literary
pieces, both in playwriting and prose. Never again, though, would he capture the agony of his
family relationships in quite the same gentle and wispy manner. THE GLASS MENAGERIE
belonged to his youth, and as the years passed, his lingering private obsessions with his past
turned into more violent scenes written for the stage and screen.
The delicacy of THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a wonder of poetry set in playwriting
form. Its form is set in a series of scenes framing episodes that move the story along.
Everything about the play creates a unity of fragility that never ceases to awe audiences. It is as if
Williams draws all of us into that floating state of memory, past images and bygone dreams.
The power of his writing is his way of taking minute physical and emotional details of his own
life and transforming them into a prayer for hope and peace for all families. Here is a mother,
Amanda, who, through delusions and wishes for total control, forces her children to either
stay and be destroyed or flee and remain distant. Later in his life, Williams once said he could
only be with his mother for about fifteen minutes at a time.
THE GLASS MENAGERIE was first produced by Eddie Dowling and Louis J. Singer at
the Lyric Theatre, Chicago, Illinois, on December 26, 1944.