ONE of the greatest plays ever written by an American writer, The Glass Menagerie is based on Williams’ guilt-ridden attempt to flee his own mother in order to claim his artistic destiny. Set in the 1930s, a son. Tom, longs to escape from his stifling home where his genteel mother worries about the future prospects of his lame baby sister, Laura.
It’s a story told by Tom based on his experience of events, tragedy pinned into everyone’s life, most evidently so in Laura’s devotion to her glass menagerie. This is paralleled by fatuous love for Tom’s friend, the ‘Gentleman caller’ who calls not for her.
Amanda as Southern matriarch is a women reduced in social circumstance but not in energy to place her family appropriately. In a poignant evening, she and Laura speak their wishes to the moon, one believingly, the other knowingly. When the horn of a beloved glass unicorn is crushed, the audience wises to what cannot happen.
The tender Tom, himself a man with injured dreams, is innocent as the conductor to pain and revelation.
Max Hafler directs this Irish show with Maria Mc Dermottroe, Sean O Meallaigh, Ionia Ni Chroinin and Marcus Lamb.
At Belltable Arts Centre, Tuesday February 22 to Thursday 24, 8pm; group tickets are just €10.
