The Glass Menagerie – an intense yet surprisingly traditional revival of Tennessee Williams’ classic play (Tinderbox at The MAC until Tuesday 27 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival)

Tinderbox’s artistic director Patrick J O’Reilly has a track record in recent years of finding the essence of old plays and making them vital for contemporary times: Rhino (2023), Yerma (2024), Animal Farm (2026).

This revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is a much more straightforward affair than might be expected, preserving the playwright’s original time and place. The text seems relatively unabridged with the deep south St Louis drawl almost dictating the unhurried two-and-a-half-hour pace. (Playwrights wouldn’t get away with that duration today!) The production does pick up on and play with the references to cinema within the play, with the majority of the house set within a big screen and movie posters being used as chapter headings. Paul Keogan’s set is then extended by slabs of light that create the boundaries of rooms downstage, though the technique is used more strikingly in the first act than after the interval. Daniel Quigley provides live accompaniment of scenes from his piano stool, as if emotionally grounding a silent movie.

Single mum Amanda lives with her twenty-something son Tom and her slightly older ‘fragile’ daughter Laura. As part of Amanda’s desire to find a “gentleman caller” for shy Laura, Tom brings home colleague Jim. Sparks fly between Laura and Jim when the power goes out, but after he reveals more about his personal life, Tom gets it in the neck from his Mum, and soon follows in the footsteps of his long-absent father (who lurks around the house like a ghost).

The quiet mirroring of costume colours (designer Rosie McClelland) reinforces the sense that the mother’s temperament has been passed down to daughter Laura, together with her desires and dashed dreams. Amanda’s glass is perpetually half empty. Yet she can be quite extrovert, sometimes to the point of mania (her friendliness becomes outright flirtation feeding off the energy of a visitor to the house), while young Laura expresses her anxiety through shyness, withdrawal, and nerviness to the point of being sick.

Úna Kavanagh brings a delicate touch to her stylistic manipulation of invisible props throughout the two acts, a key part of Tinderbox’s sense of physicality. Yet, in an instant, she can blow a fuse and deploy mother Amanda’s favourite tool of coercive control.

Louise Parker’s Laura is comfortable with familiar people, capable of talking back cheekily to her mother and brother, while initially very edgy around her ‘gentleman caller’. There’s a warmth to Parker’s performance and her second act candlelit scene with visitor Jim inspires such hope ... before all positivity is smothered.

Thomas Galashan is outstanding as the narrator Tom, the breadwinning son of the family, and also performs the tasks of a stage manager in his memory play. His portrayal of Tom leans into the young man’s motive and means to escape the Wingfield home. Sadly, his sister is fully trapped. Tom’s actions may not be wholesome or entirely positive, but they are heartfelt.

Into this uneasy setting steps Jim O’Connor, unwittingly visiting the Wingfield home under false pretences. Actor Jacob Baird has the measure of this bumptious hustler: if he was any more pleased with his self-advancement, he’d twin-pack himself. Yet this cocksure smugness is also paired with a self-awareness that the one-time big player in school is now a fallen star who has more ambition than opportunity to grow. 

In Tennessee Williams’ memory play, things have a habit of working out worse than badly. This production doesn’t overly explore the unreliability of looking back to post-justify Tom’s action. But Tinderbox has created an incredibly intense version of The Glass Menagerie with a mother who would drive a saint to despair, who lacks empathy towards her daughter’s disposition, and is actively curating her household’s misery.

The director hasn’t given in to the temptation to remodel the cut glass menagerie of creatures and vinyl records as a modern digital menagerie that needs polished and distracts us from the reality. The overbearing parenting style of Amanda and the socially anxious Laura are as familiar today as in 1944. While the changing weather is a constant refrain in the dialogue, the piano accompaniment can’t quite trumpet the change in precipitation as immediately or effectively as an actual sound effect.

Tinderbox’s The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams continues its run at The MAC as part of Belfast International Arts Festival until Tuesday 27 October. It’s the first professional production of the play in Northen Ireland for 20 years, so don’t miss out.

Photo credit: Lost Lens Caps

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