When it opened in Chicago in 1944, The Glass Menagerie marked a turningpoint in American theater and in the life of its then unknown author. TennesseeWilliams’s elegiac masterpiece
brought a radical new lyricism to Broadway—andtoday the tragedy, fragility, and tenderness of this “memory play” endure.
In a cramped St. Louis apartment the aging Southern belle Amanda Wingfield, long preoccupied by memories of gentlemen callers and a world that nolonger exists, is energized by the dilemma of
how to save what remains of herfamily. Her restless son Tom — factory worker, aspiring poet, and the narrator ofthe play — is swept up in Amanda’s comic and heartbreaking schemes to findLaura,
his agonizingly shy and handicapped sister, a husband.
This new edition of The Glass Menagerie comes with an exciting introduction by the playwright Tony Kushner. Williams’s classic essay on the effect ofswift and unexpected fame, “The
Catastrophe of Success,” his original production notes, and a new essay on the autobiographical background of the play bythe distinguished Williams scholar Allean Hale are also included.
