The Glass Menagerie

This autobiographical play about his mother and sister was Tennessee Williams’ first great popular success and launched his brilliant and controversial career. Set in St. Louis during the depression era of the 1930s, The Glass Menagerie is the poignant drama of a family’s gradual disintegration, under pressure both from outside and within. Tennessee Williams recalled his sister’s small glass menagerie as “all the softest emotions that belong to the recollection of things past. They stood for all the small and tender things that relieve the austere pattern of life and make it endurable to the sensitive.”