The Glass Menagerie

November 13 & 14, 2021 | Main Stage | Saturday 14:30 & 20:30, Sunday 20:30

Three solitudes behind almost-closed doors; three human frailties; three ways to dream of a different life. How far does the truth lie from illusion? How easy is it to escape from Tennessee Williams’ Glass Menagerie? This Onassis Stegi international co-production directed by Ivo van Hove is coming to its Main Stage on November 13 and 14.

“In The Glass Menagerie, I discovered a work without any discernible heroism, a world populated by fragile people. Our leads are filled with doubt and trauma and secrets,” notes Ivo van Hove, who returns to Onassis Stegi with a Tennessee Williams masterpiece in which Isabelle Huppert takes on one of the most thrilling roles in the American theater repertoire.

“The scene is memory.” It is a scene inhabited by three characters: a mother, Amanda, and her two adult children, Laura and Tom. Amanda still pictures herself as a genteel Southern belle. Tom provides for the family, and slips off to the cinema every chance he gets. Laura spends endless hours with her menagerie of little spun glass animals.

The work is set in the 1930s, during the rise of fascism in Europe. As Ivo van Hove notes: “Tennessee Williams is aware of this historical phenomenon in his writings. He knows that the world is being gradually brutalized. After all, it resembles our world. We also feel an ever-growing cruelty. We don’t care at all about other people’s opinion anymore, we express ours immediately, we react instantly, instinctively, impulsively. This is dangerous. Such a world, where violence is so common, where nobody really understands the other, is dangerously close to war.”

Credits

Directed by: Ivo Van Hove

With: Isabelle Huppert, Justine Bachelet, Cyril Guei, Antoine Reinartz

French Translation: Isabelle Framchon

Dramaturgy: Koen Tachelet

Artistic Associate: Mathieu Dandreau

Sets & Lighting Design: Jan Versweyveld

Costumes: An D’huys

Music: George Dhauw

Creation: Odéon – Théâtre de l'Europe, March 6, 2020

Production: Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe

Co-production: Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand Scène Nationale, Onassis Stegi, Desingel (Antwerp), Barbican (London)

Supported by: Le Cercle de l’Odéon

Read more

Ivo van Hove

Ivo van Hove has been director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam since 2001. Born in Belgium in 1958, he began his career as a theater director in 1981 with his own productions (Germs, Rumours). From 1990 to 2000, he was director of Het Zuidelijk Toneel. From 1998 to 2004, he managed the Holland Festival, annually presenting his selection of international theater, music, opera, and dance. Until 2010 he was one of the artistic leaders of the Dramatic Arts department in Antwerp.

Theater productions by Ivo van Hove have been performed all over the world, from New York to Moscow, Paris, Buenos Aires, and Sydney. The numerous awards he has garnered include two Olivier Awards and two Tony Awards for A View from the Bridge; the Amsterdam Oeuvre Award together with Jan Versweyveld; two Obie Awards for More Stately Mansions and Hedda Gabler; the Archangel Award at the Edinburgh Festival; and the Critic’s Circle Award in the Netherlands. He has also been awarded an honorary doctorate for general merit from the University of Antwerp, and the Flemish Culture Prize for Overall Cultural Merit from the Flemish Government, while King Filip of Belgium awarded him Commander of the Order of the Crown. He is Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Greek audiences were first introduced to the work of Ivo van Hove when he presented his adaptation of the renowned Ingmar Bergman film Scenes from a Marriage on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage in April 2011.

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi in March 26, 1911, two years after his sister, Rose. The family moved to St. Louis in 1918. At the age of 16, Williams won third prize for an essay published in Smart Set. One year later, he published his first short story in the magazine Weird Tales. In 1938, Williams graduated with a BA from the University of Iowa. Soon after, he won the Group Theater prize for his play American Blues, and was awarded grants by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Rockefeller Foundation in recognition of his play Battle of Angels. In 1944, The Glass Menagerie was a hit in Chicago and on Broadway, winning the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the season. Williams shared the copyright for this work with his mother, thus securing her a stable income. The next eight years saw the production of his works A Streetcar Named Desire (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1948), Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. The film adaptations of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, in 1950 and ’51, brought Williams international fame, and over the next 15 years, his fame only grew. Dividing his time between Key West, New Orleans, and New York, he would see numerous productions of his plays on Broadway, as well as many film adaptations of his work, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1955), Suddenly, Last Summer, Orpheus Descending, and The Night of the Iguana.

Williams died on February 24, 1983 in New York.

Tony Kushner on The Glass Menagerie

What’s present in Menagerie is the power of intense fragility, a power dependent on kindness, on a desire of another to protect the frail thing and prevent its breaking, a passive power that works through love.

Tennessee’s intention, avowed in his notebooks, his letters and essays, stories and poems, was to bring the power of intense fragility center stage in American theater, to give it representation, to parse its essence and proclaim it as an essential component energy in the dynamics of human life. He also gave representation to the adversary of fragility, to the aggressive, steamrolling, bullying violence so familiar from life with his father, and which alone was recognizable to his country and his historical period as power and strength. He knew himself and the fugitive kind for whom he felt appointed to speak to be at odds with, even locked in battle against, implacable forces of history ascending, as he labored on Menagerie, to an apotheosis of savagery and barbarism. His championing of the power of intense fragility was as radical as his faith in the power of that intensely fragile thing, art. Frailty and art were, for Tennessee, intrinsic to one another. He was an aesthete, of sorts.

Tony Kushner (from his introduction to The Glass Menagerie: The Deluxe Centennial Edition, New York: New Directions, 2011, pp. 33-34)

Production Info

Onassis Stegi

107-109 Syngrou Avenue

November 13 & 14, 2021

Main Stage

Performances: Saturday 14:30 & 20:30, Sunday 20:30

Duration: 139 minutes

In accordance with Greek government guidance, and as part of measures combatting the spread of Covid-19, everyone entering the Onassis Stegi venue must present either a vaccination certificate (valid 14 days after final dose) or a recovery certificate (valid for six months after diagnosis).

An ID card or passport must also be presented, for verification purposes. Specially appointed staff will check these certificates by scanning the relevant QR code using the official “CovidFreeGr” app. Read more here.

Here at Onassis Stegi, everyone’s safety is our prime concern.

MAIN STAGE – AUDIENCE ARRIVAL GUIDELINES

To ensure public safety, audience arrivals have been staggered into four 15-minute time slots, starting from 19:30.
Specifically:

Arrival Time Slot A: 19:30-19:45 – Balcony (Level 2)

Arrival Time Slot B: 19:45-20:00 – Mezzanine (Level 1)

Arrival Time Slot C: 20:00-20:15 – Stalls, Rows Μ-Τ

Arrival Time Slot D: 20:15-20:30 – Stalls, Rows Δ-Λ

Tickets

Onassis Stegi Friends presale: from Thursday, October 21, 17:00

General presale: from Saturday, October 23, 17:00

Full Price: 7€ – 15€ – 18€ – 28€

Concessions, Stegi Friends & Groups (5-9 persons): 12€ – 15€ – 22€

Large Groups (10+ persons): 10€

Limited Visibility & Local Residents: 7€

People with Disabilities & the Unemployed: 5€

Companions: 10€
For group bookings, please contact: groupsales@onassis.org

The digital ticket/print@home service is available for all tickets purchased online. Access the PDF file using your smart device, save your ticket to your Android or iOS wallet, or print it out and proceed directly to the auditorium.

TICKET HOTLINE
+30 210 900 5800

ONASSIS STEGI FRIENDS HOTLINE

+30 213 017 8200

ONASSIS STEGI TICKET OFFICE (107-109 Syngrou Avenue)
The Onassis Stegi Ticket Office will remain closed until further notice.

VISITOR SAFETY GUIDELINES

Face masks must be worn everywhere inside Onassis Stegi.

Hand sanitizer stations are provided throughout the building.

Visitors must make their way directly to the auditoria and are not allowed to linger in the venue’s public areas (such as the foyer).

To avoid congestion, visitors will be assigned specific arrival time slots. Tickets must be brought printed out, or presented in digital form.

Tickets are strictly for personal use and are non-transferable.

Performances have no intermission.

The ground floor cloakroom and bar (Liquid Bar) will remain closed.

Audience members must sit in the seats indicated on their tickets – no seating changes are allowed.

Please follow the instructions of our security staff and ushers as you enter and exit the auditoria.

Onassis Stegi reserves the right to eject any ticket holder refusing to follow the rules and regulations set out here.

For Main Stage, Upper Stage, and Exhibition Hall (-1) events, use of the elevators is restricted to two persons at a time. Face masks must be worn.

Access to the underground car park is limited to drivers of vehicles. Face masks must be worn.

The Onassis Stegi ticket office will remain closed. Tickets cannot be printed out on site.

Tickets can be purchased on our website (onassis.org) and via our call center.

Visitors must print out their own tickets before arrival, or present them in digital form.