Kate O’Flynn as Laura and Brian J Smith as Jim
(Photo: Johan Persson)
021 – The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams
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The narrator tells us up front: “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic….I am the narrator of the play and also a character in it. The other characters are my mother, Amanda, my sister Laura, and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scenes.” The narrator is Tom, an aspiring writer who is trapped in the “living death” of a job in a shoe factory and the claustrophobia of life in a small apartment in a tenement in St Louis with his mother and sister. The play which Tom narrates, and plays his part in, consists of a series of snapshots of the family’s life back in 1938, filtered through the emotional lens of Tom’s memory. The play is very much “a picture of my own heart”, as its author Tennessee Williams said about the intent of all of his play writing, and in this case it is a particularly personal portrait of Williams’ own family. The Glass Menagerie was Tennessee Williams’s breakthrough, opening in March 1945 on Broadway to rave reviews, and its box office success catapulted its 34-year old author to fame and fortune, a status affirmed two years later with the Broadway success of his most famous play A Streetcar Named Desire.
The Glass Menagerie is now a standard on educational curricula and in perennial theatrical revivals, loved for its heart wrenching portrayal of the hopes and disappointments of this flawed family, and admired for its theatrical technique and poetic dramatic language. The play was brilliantly staged in 2013 on Broadway in a production directed by John Tiffany, which was revived in 2017 in London’s West End, with Cherry Jones repeating her role as Amanda, and Kate O’Flynn giving an ethereal performance as Laura. I am absolutely delighted to be joined in this episode by the director John Tiffany to share his insights into this enduring classic.
John Tiffany
John Tiffany is the winner of two Tony Awards, an Olivier, a Drama Desk and an Obie award as a director and his productions have earned countless other award nominations and wins. His recent work includes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in both London and New York (Tony and Olivier Awards for Best Direction of a Play); The Glass Menagerie (A.R.T., Broadway and West End); The Ambassador (BAM); Pinocchio (National Theatre); Once (Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical). For the National Theatre of Scotland he directed Let the Right One In (also Royal Court, West End and St. Ann’s Warehouse); Macbeth (also Lincoln Center and Broadway); Enquirer; The Missing; Peter Pan; The House of Bernarda Alba; The Bacchae (also Lincoln Center); Black Watch (Olivier Award for Best Director); Elizabeth Gordon Quinn; Home: Glasgow. As Associate Director at the Royal Court Theatre, productions include The End of History, Road, The Twits, Hope and The Pass.
John was educated at the University of Glasgow (M.A. in Theatre and Classics). He was founding Associate Director at the National Theatre of Scotland from 2005–2012 and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University from 2010–2011.
Recommended Play
John recommended Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill – see episode 30!
Our Footnotes to The Glass Menagerie include Tennessee Williams’ innovative ideas about lighting as an element of what he called his “plastic drama”; the endearing ambiguity of the character of Jim, the gentleman caller; the infinite distance of memory; and the explosive times the play was written and set in.
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063 – Dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel
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Brian Friel’s magical memory play Dancing at Lughnasa is set at the time of the harvest festival in rural Ireland in 1936. It’s account of the events of that summer in the house of the five unmarried Mundy sisters is filtered many years later through the memory of Michael, the son of the youngest sister. His memory is undoubtedly unreliable, but it is also funny, poetic and profoundly poignant.
Josie Rourke, who directs the gorgeous new production of the play currently playing at the National Theatre in London, joins us to explore Friel’s spellbinding masterpiece.
062 – Private Lives, by Noël Coward
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Noël Coward’s play Private Lives is both a dazzling dramatic comedy and an excoriating portrait of love and marriage among the disaffected elite of the Jazz Age. Coward himself starred in the premiere production in both London and New York in 1930, the critics acclaiming the show’s construction and wit, but predicting that it would not last. As a new production opens at the Donmar theatre in London, I ask Coward’s newest biographer, Oliver Soden, why the play has aged so well.
061 – Sea Creatures, by Cordelia Lynn
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Cordelia Lynn’s play Sea Creatures is a poetic exploration of loss and grief, its setting betwixt the sea and shore rich in metaphoric resonances. As we record this episode, Sea Creatures is playing at the Hampstead Theatre in London in a spellbinding production directed by James Macdonald.
I am delighted to be joined by playwright Cordelia Lynn to talk about her fascinating new play.
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