'One of Tennessee Williams' most beautiful, haunting and generous plays.' Sunday Times The writer's first great popular success, the play launched the brilliant career of this ground-breaking American playwright. A staple text on Drama and Literature courses. Expert commentary and notes for students, including questions for further study, a chronology of the writer's life and work and a bibliography. Alongside Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American playwrights of the twentieth century.
Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 and started writing aged forteen as a means of "escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable". He spent the Depression years working in a shoe factory, before eventually getting his plays professionally produced in the 40s, starting with The Glass Menagerie which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. In 1947 A Street Car Named Desire opened in New York and ran for 885 performances. Williams died in 1983.
'The thrill of shattered glass and the piercing pain of unfulfilled longing: this revival by Braham Murray resounds with the high-pitched sound of both' The Times - Sam Marlowe 'Menagerie is a claustrophobic play about people struggling to get away from the harsh realities of their circumstances and live their dreams. It is as much about the post-Depression American Dream as it is about personal aspiration.' Guardian - Lyn Gardner 'If ever a play were informed by its author's biography, it is Tennessee William's memory play, a delicate, almost Chekhovian drama flecked with regret and guilt. Like the narrator, young Tom Wingfield, Williams undertook a Houdini-like disappearing trick to escape his family in St Louis and become a writer. Like Tom, he could never entirely blow the candle of memory out. It flickers and splutters through all his best work.' Guardian - Lyn Gardner 'The play works its melancholy magic' Guardian - Lyn Gardner
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