John Tiffany Archives - The Play Podcast

John Tiffany

by Douglas Schatz | Mar 1, 2022 | Contributor

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.

He was educated at the University of Glasgow (M.A. in Theatre and Classics). John was founding Associate Director at the National Theatre of Scotland from 2005–2012 and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University from 2010–2011.

Podcast Episode(s)

021 - The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams

Recommended Play(s)

John recommended Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill – see episode 30!

021 – The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams

by Douglas Schatz | Feb 24, 2021 | Podcast Episodes

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!

We have footnotes for this episode …

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.

Footnotes for Patrons

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.