"The Glass Menagerie’" of Tennessee Williams

The “Glass Menagerie” is a poetical play. It takes place inside the characters and it is literally an indoor drama: an in camera, a kind of basement. The only different space in the play is the landing of the fire exit. There is no visible outdoor space. In the “Glass Menagerie” I have discovered a world with no visible heroism, a world inhabited by three vulnerable characters. Each one of them retires into his own world. Amanda, a widow with two children, escapes in the past, believing that the life in the South was luxurious. For her, that was a life with rules and codes, where everyone had good manners and knew how to look civilized. Isabelle plays Amanda like a phoenix arising from its ashes. Her daughter Laura, retires always further, in a completely inner world, a purely fictional universe, a time shelter. The metaphor of this world is the glass menagerie. Tom wants to run away, to escape from everything. He is always ready to flee, but he always returns, incapable to escape. The arrival of Tom’s friend is a bomb breaking the delicate balance.

Tennessee Williams gives a voice to the weak characters, trying to understand and to represent them, trying to understand their power, their resilience and inner resistance.

I have been dreaming for a long time to direct this play, because it is about the power of fragility in a brutal and violent world.
— Ivo van Hove