By Tennessee Williams

Directed by Dane Eissler

@ Provincetown Town Hall

Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission

The Glass Menagerie was written by Williams at the dawn of his career. The 2024 Festival’s production shares a new insight to the famous text by staging it on the same set and with the same cast as Something Cloudy, Something Clear, written at the twilight of Williams’ life.

The Glass Menagerie launched Williams into superstardom by exploring his tumultuous family life in Depression-era St. Louis. The play is no mirror. Williams created Tom, a version of himself, to tell the story of The Glass Menagerie and to be a character in it. Tom abandons his mother, Amanda, and his sister, Laura —as his father had done to them — for a new life. Tom’s guilt— along with his inability to confess his love for his work friend, Jim —follows him throughout his life and, in this repertory production, all the way to old age. The memory of love—his mother’s, his sister’s, his own — follows Tom throughout his life, too, undoing his attempt to escape and forget their love.

The scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic. Memory takes poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

- The Glass Menagerie