★★★★★
What choices do we make when there are no good choices?
Melbourne Theatre Company’s The Glass Menagerie is a moving exploration of three people bound and constrained on all sides – by family ties, by poverty’s strictures, and by society’s expectations.
This production is a stunning contemporary adaptation of the play that catapulted Tennessee Williams to fame in 1944. The play, which draws heavily on Williams’ own life, centres on the tense dynamics of an indigent family in St Louis, Missouri, during the 1930s.
Millie Donaldson plays Laura Wingfield, a quiet young woman with a disability. Browbeaten by life, her main interest is playing with her ‘glass menagerie’ – a collection of delicate glass animals.
Without any gentleman callers and without success in secretarial college, her mother, Amanda Wingfield (Alison Whyte), fears Laura will face a precarious future. The family’s survival depends on Laura’s brother Tom’s (Tim Draxl) job at a shoe warehouse – pressure and tedium that he finds suffocating.
The family is united by an undercurrent of desperation. But director Mark Wilson finds space to explore each character’s emotional terrain within the home’s tinderbox dynamics.
Alison Whyte walks the line between nostalgia and hysteria as a former Southern belle from a white plantation family. She reflects on the many paths – and suitors – not taken, while transmuting her anxiousness for the present into hectoring at her children.
In each passing scene, we feel Amanda’s daily battle to overcome her distaste at the life she’s living and recommit to the practicalities of making it work.
Millie Donaldson’s desperation as Laura is quieter in tone. Her almost-naive lack of vision for her own future seems to reflect a learned blindness, as life’s series of disappointments and discrimination has taught her to keep her eyes firmly earthward.
That makes her fleeting glimmers of openness when Tom’s colleague Jim O’Connor comes to dinner even more poignant. Harry McGee plays O’Connor, the boy-next-door type who serves as a vessel for the family’s hopes.
Tim Draxl is restless and ready to pounce as Tom Wingfield. His palpable disquiet helps to explain, even if not emotionally justify, his ultimate choice to carve his own life. And his brooding, watching presence as off-stage narrator speaks to the consequences of that choice, standing in for the haunted Tennessee Williams himself.
We, as the audience, are even complicit – applauding the fruits of Williams’ decision to pursue a creative life even as we feel deeply for the family he leaves behind.
Wilson’s thoughtful interpretation is supported by a crack creative team. Geraldine Cook-Dafne’s work as voice and dialect coach is superb; the cast’s convincing drawls don’t slip throughout the entire two-hour run.
Paul Lim’s lighting direction, particularly the use of candles, has the visual effect of a whispered secret. You lean in closer, wanting to catch every moment. And Kat Chan’s static three-room set helps build the sense of claustrophobia that ultimately repulses Tom from his home.
The dirt that extends high up the white walls affronts the senses with a permanent reminder of the poverty from which there is no escape.
The Glass Menagerie is a brilliant production from Melbourne Theatre Company that will satisfy Tennessee Williams fans and novices alike.
The Glass Menagerie is presented by Melbourne Theatre Company. It runs to 5 June at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner. 140 Southbank Boulevard Southbank Vic 3006.
Tickets: https://tickets.mtc.com.au/production/19783
Website: https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/whats-on/season-2026/the-glass-menagerie
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/melbtheatreco/
Photo credits: Pia Johnson
