The Glass Menagerie

Jul 22

Written By Guest User

by Tennessee Williams

directed by Will York
starring Celeste Burnum

Actors Theatre of Alabama

Birmingham, AL

The Glass Menagerie

A bittersweet classic by Tennessee Williams.

In it, the author remembers with regret the lost chance his sister had for love. At its heart is Williams’ awe at his own mother’s steely determination fortified by Southern charm.

There’s a fiddle in the wings and old records on a wind-up gramophone because, as the narrator tells us: in memory everything seems to happen to music.

Don't miss the thematic centerpiece of this year's Festival, and one of the world's most enduring literary masterpieces.

Actors Theatre of Alabama
"grabs the 1944 drama by the throat
and takes its family tension to a high pitch."
- Birmingham News

This "smashing" new production from Birmingham stars Celeste Burnum, who was acclaimed by the Birmingham News as "the ultimate Williams heroine: a tragic figure who's admirable for her stubborn perseverance."

Veteran Alabama actress Celeste Burnum (left), who plays the role of the mother, Amanda Wingfield, has a long pedigree of Williams roles, and memorably portrayed Blanche DuBois in Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire as well as in the parody, The Glass Mendacity. Her varied Williams credits also include a barfly floozy with a big wig and a little hat in A Perfect Analysis in Given by a Parrot and an eighty-year old man in The Frosted Glass Coffin.

Among many acclaimed performances: Vivian Bearing in Wit, Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt and several seasons at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

The Glass Menagerie was written in a dune shack in Provincetown in the fall of 1944. By spring of 1945 the play had gone from a triumphant run in Chicago to Broadway success, forever changing Tennessee Williams’ life.

The Provincetown High School’s senior class production in 2006 was a highlight of the Festival’s first season; it is therefore fitting that the Festival’s second production of this great play comes up from Dixie and plays on the same stage.

Pictured at left, Amanda Maddox as Laura and Trey York as the Gentleman Caller appear in The Glass Menagerie

photo by David Garrett.