Director’s Note: Liesel Badorrek, THE GLASS MENAGERIE
Tennessee Williams is a towering figure in the landscape of twentieth century theatre. His work continues to be performed constantly – a standard in the season of theatre companies the world over; as well as studied and adapted. In fact, he looms so large as a literary stalwart, that it is easy to forget how groundbreaking he was, both professionally and personally.
With THE GLASS MENAGERIE, his most autobiographical work and the play that launched his career, Williams wanted to break with the prosaic realism that he felt had dominated the American Theatre and explore a style of ‘plastic theatre’ which utilised symbolism through elements beyond dialogue, such as lighting, music, projection and stylised movement. In THE GLASS MENAGERIE he flirts with the expressionism that had captivated European theatre but ultimately creates something altogether more lyrical.
It is the beauty and sensuality of Williams’ poetry that we have embraced in this production of the play – delighting in the Russian doll structure of a playwright creating a narrator who both guides us through the play and features as a character in it – Tom, a version of the young Tennessee Williams himself. This young Tom, caged and repressed, rattles the bars of his prison created by the times he lives in, the monotony of poverty and the crushing weight of responsibility for his mother Amanda and his sister Laura.
In this séance with the ghosts of his past, Williams gives us four of modern theatre’s most iconic characters, dancing together in a drama of intense beauty and melancholy but with moments of humour and love that are by turns as heady as jonquils and as delicate as a glass unicorn.
The original music composed for this production by Maria Alfonsine and Damian de Boos Smith, is played on organ, cello and cristal baschet – a contemporary instrument which is made of glass.
Liesel Badorrek
Playing 21 Mar – 26 Apr, don’t miss this iconic family drama by one of the world’s great playwrights.