The Glass Menagerie
★★★★☆ Reflective
Lyceum: Tue 4 – Sat 8 Nov 2025
Review by Hugh Simpson
There is intelligence, theatrical knowhow and surprising humour in The Glass Menagerie, at the Lyceum for one week only. The Dundee Rep production (in association with the Citizens and the Lyceum) is utterly convincing and wonderfully acted.
Tennessee Williams’s autobiographical ‘memory play’ from 1944 is sometimes presented with an overcooked sultriness that lays great stress on its symbolism. Here the story, of the frustrated writer Tom and his domineering mother, who is obsessed with finding a ‘gentleman caller’ for his shy sister, is presented with a matter-of-fact coolness.
Amy Conachan (Laura Wingfield) and Sara Stewart (Amanda Wingfield) with Christopher Jordan-Marshall (Tom Wingfield). Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
Andrew Panton’s direction is beautifully poised and limpid, while bringing out tremendous performances. Christopher Jordan-Marshall’s Tom is compelling from the moment he almost sidles on to the stage with the house lights still up, setting the scene.
There is a wonderfully loose-limbed immediacy to Jordan-Marshall that is matched in its impact by the rest of the cast.
As mother Amanda, Sara Stewart has none of the barnstorming melodramatics that usually characterise the faded Southern belle, instead having a lightness of touch and comparative humour that is exceptionally effective. Here the problem is clearly not that mother and son are so diametrically opposed, but rather that they are temperamentally so similar.
knowing
As is usual, there is a knowing nature to the discussions of Tom’s nightly ‘trips to the movies’, with their hints of a double life that Williams could not openly address when the play was written, but these are done (like everything else here) with delicacy and consideration.
Christopher Jordan-Marshall (Tom Wingfield) and Amy Conachan (Laura Wingfield). Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
Amy Conachan is simply brilliant as Laura, with her anxiety, delight and disappointment brilliantly evoked. Declan Spaine invests the ‘gentleman caller’ Jim with dignity and believability, as well as playing guitar and singing, performing much of Reuben Joseph’s spare, effective composition and sound design.
Emily James’s set design, featuring the bleached skeleton of a house, is thoroughly evocative, while Simon Wilkinson’s lighting design – bouncing off the glass animals and creating the effects of candlelight – is simply stunning.
hypnotic
The production certainly draws attention to its own artificiality (as does the play itself) and its pace is almost wilfully slow. This does point up some of the play’s more dated elements, such as the language. More often, the effect is hypnotic, with EJ Boyle’s movement design notably strong. Moments such as the exaggerated miming of mealtimes could come across as annoying, but work beautifully.
The end result does lose some of the intensity that the play usually possesses, but the poetry and heartbreaking psychological realism are foregrounded in a highly successful production.
Running time: Two hours 30 minutes (including one interval)
Lyceum Theatre, 30 Grindlay St, EH3 9AX
Tuesday 4 – Saturday 8 November 2025
Daily at 7.30 pm; Matinees Wed, Sat at 2.30 pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
Declan Spaine (Jim O’Connor) and Amy Conachan (Laura Wingfield). Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
ENDS
