Classic drama doesn’t disappoint

Laura (Katie Moore) in a moment of happiness in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie

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THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Oldham Coliseum

TENNESSEE Williams’s part-autobiographical play is a gentle, faded portrait of a boiling cauldron of intense emotions. And if you think that is a tall order to put on stage, you’re dead right.

The Wingfields are a close-knit family of overbearing mother, Amanda; shy-to-the-point-of-sociopathic daughter Laura, and younger, straining-at-the-leash son Tom.

Since their father’s abandonment of the family, the three have grown inward rather than outward: Amanda dreams of the youth she refuses leave behind; slightly-crippled Laura is trapped at the bottom of a pit of shyness, her glass animals her only friends, and Tom will burst if he doesn’t exit the stifling atmosphere.

The portrait is one on the point of break-up, and Williams dismantles it in a devastatingly mundane way.

The glory of this play is the way Williams does such a lot with so little, and this joint Coliseum/Staffordshire New Vic production by Sarah Punshon certainly lives up to its challenges.

Tom (James Joyce) fizzes with immature energy while Katie Moore is a sweet, delicate Laura, whose shyness dissipates when Jim (Harry Livingstone), the dinner guest, pays genuine attention to her and whose new confidence visibly drains when his circumstances become clear.

Livingstone is a first-rate Jim, making the character affable without being overbearing, a man whose nature is clearly more quietly mature and caring than that of his workmate, Tom.

Pulling the whole thing together is Louise Bangay as a determined but fragile Amanda — clearly a woman so desperate not to have her children leave her too, that she is unconsciously pushing them away.

Miss Bangay offers a sympathetically annoying performance of a woman too keen to help her family, and in all the wrong ways.

The slight downside of the production is the set: in Staffordshire the Royal Exchange-style “round” set up was no doubt perfect for this collection of furniture.

In Oldham the furniture is backed by black, featureless (despite occasional projections) walls, making the stage stark and rather clumsy.

This apart, this is one of the most satisfying classic dramas at the Coliseum for some time.