Sally Field & Joe Mantello star in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway.
Two-time Academy Award winner Sally Field and two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello star in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie on Broadway. Also starring Finn Wittrock and Madison Ferris. Tony winner Sam Gold directs.
The Glass Menagerie is the play that brought a brilliant young writer named Tennessee Williams to national attention when it premiered on Broadway in 1945. More than seventy years later, Williams' most personal work for the stage continues to captivate and overwhelm audiences around the world.
Sam Gold is the latest to pick up the next-to-nothing-is-more approach to Tennessee Williams. The American director's 'Glass Menagerie' opened Thursday at the Belasco Theatre, and it is pure Gold in every sense of the word. Has there ever been a barer stage on Broadway? The four actors enter from a side door on the orchestra level, with Sally Field pushing newcomer Madison Ferris in a wheelchair. What follows is one of the evening's many silent longueurs as Ferris, a woman with muscular dystrophy, negotiates the small staircase to the stage to take her place there. Occasionally, she walks by pushing her buttocks in the air and taking steps on her feet and hands. But for most of the production, this Laura sits on the floor or in the wheelchair. It's odd to begin a review by concentrating on an actor's physical challenges, but that first long ascent to the stage pretty much establishes Field's tortured Amanda Wingfield and, in essence, Gold's take on 'The Glass Menagerie.' It's a daring, masterful stroke, and one that redefines the Williams classic, and will influence every 'Menagerie' to come in the next few years.
What if someone took Tennessee Williams at his word and pushed it to extremes? You would have Sam Gold's starkly compelling, bravely executed revival at the Belasco Theatre. By the standards of our downtown avant-garde-long influenced by Euro regietheater and the deconstructive antics of the Wooster Group-Gold's approach is familiar. It's the 3M Plan: minimal, metatheatrical, modern dress. Still, it's rare for a Broadway audience to face an iconic stage classic so radically and brutally 'interrogated.' For that reason alone, it is imperative that you see it.
1945 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
1965 | Broadway |
The Twentieth Anniversary Production Broadway |
1975 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
1983 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
1994 | Broadway |
Roundabout Revival Broadway |
2005 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2010 | Off-Broadway |
Roundabout Revival Off-Broadway |
2013 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2017 | West End |
West End Revival West End |
2017 | Broadway |
2017 Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
2018 | Regional (US) |
Barrington Stage Company Production Regional (US) |
2022 | West End |
London Production West End |
West End |
West End |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2017 | BroadwayWorld Awards | Best Leading Actress in a Play | Sally Field |
2017 | BroadwayWorld Awards | Best Revival of a Play | The Glass Menagerie |
2017 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Sally Field |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Sally Field |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Sally Field |
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