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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

The Glass Menagerie review – exquisite, utterly devastating take on Tennessee Williams’ classic

Eva Morgan and Jad Sayegh in The Glass Menagerie at the Yard theatre.
Trapped life and necessary illusion … Eva Morgan and Jad Sayegh in The Glass Menagerie at the Yard theatre. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

Tennessee Williams’ semi-autobiographical “memory play” is sentimental by its nature. Memory takes poetic licence and is “seated predominantly in the heart”, Williams tells us in his opening. This production shows us how poetic it can be but also how nightmarish and tormenting.

Exquisitely directed by Jay Miller, the story of pained family love between narrator Tom Wingfield (Tom Varey), who aspires to be a poet, his emotionally fragile sister, Laura (Eva Morgan), who has a limp that is not visible here, and their domineering mother, Amanda (Sharon Small), is dimly lit but strikingly shorn of sentimentality.

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