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The Glass Menagerie (Penguin Plays & Screenplays) [Paperback]

Tennessee Williams
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 96 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (25 Feb 1988)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140106391
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140106398
  • Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.7 x 0.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 63,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Tennessee Williams
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Product Description

Review

"Fine listening...It is wonderful."-- "Cleveland Plain Dealer""Moving and hauntingly effective."-- "Boston Herald" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

SET IN ST LOUIS DURING THE DEPRESSION, THE GLASS MENAGERIE IS ONE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' MOST POWERFUL AND MOVING PLAYS. ABANDONED BY HER HUSBAND WHEN HE 'FELL IN LOVE WITH LONG DISTANCES', AMANDA WINGFIELD COMFORTS HERSELF WITH RECOLLECTIONS OF HER EARLIER, MORE GRACIOUS, LIFE IN BLUE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE WAS PURSUED BY 'GENTLEMAN CALLERS'. HER SON TOM, A POET WITH A JOB IN A WAREHOUSE, LONGS FOR ADVENTURE AND ESCAPE FROM HIS MOTHER'S SUFFOCATING EMBRACE. LAURA, HER SHY CRIPPLED DAUGHTER, HAS HER GLASS MENAGERIE AND HER MEMORIES. AMANDA IS DESPERATE TO FIND HER DAUGHTER A HUSBAND, BUT WHEN THE LONG-AWAITED GENTLEMAN CALLER DOES ARRIVE, LAURA'S ROMANTIC ILLUSIONS ARE FINALLY CRUSHED. MIRRORING THE QUIET DESPAIR OF THE THIRTIES, THE GLASS MENAGERIE IN ITS NOSTALGIA FOR A PAST WORLD AND ITS EVOCATION OF LONELINESS AND LOST LOVE CELEBRATES, ABOVE ALL, THE HUMAN NEED TO DREAM.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
The Wingfield apartment is in the rear of the building, one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centres of lower-middle-class population and are symptomatic of the impulse of this largest and fundamentally enslaved section of American society to avoid fluidity and differentiation and to exist and function as one interfused mass of automatism. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Williams Most Autobiographical Work, 21 Feb 2003
By 
Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Glass Menagerie (Penguin Plays & Screenplays) (Paperback)
There are few American playwrights who rank as highly in the Pantheon as Tennessee Williams. He is up there with O'Neill, Miller and Albee as amongst the quintessential dramatists of the 20th century. This is one of his earliest, and in some respects his most timeless, of his scripts. No one can argue that it his most autobiographical, as it portrays a cloyingly suffocating matriarch, Amanda, and a younger sister, Laura, who are both interchangable characters for Williams' own little St Louis family. Actually, in real life, the outcome was much more tragic, as Williams' mother had a frontal lobotomy performed on his actual sister. One can see how Williams may have harbored some deep resentments towards his mother, and he spends most of his time getting even with her in this Euripidean play.
Though recent adaptations of this play have emphasized the "touchy-feely" aspects of the relationship between brother and sister (Why does Treat Williams come to mind?), the actual script lends itself to a much darker, Medea-like interpretation, which I believe Williams originally intended. This is Williams way of getting back at the evil Witch of the West who dominated his youth and who would exert her influence upon him for the rest of his life. It doesn't take a Freud to untangle this thread

If you want to watch a great performnace of this play, try to track down the "Broadway Theater Archive" 1973 version with Katherine Hepburn as Amanda, Sam Waterston as Tom, Michael Moriarity as "The Gentleman Caller," and Joanna Miles as an unforgettably vulnerable and poignant Laura. The Paul Newman 1987 theatrical release had a strong cast as well, but can't compete.

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5.0 out of 5 stars great!!, 9 May 2009
By 
N. Akhtar (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
another great drama by tennessee williams, showing the complexities of real life, and how one can live in an illusion to escape life
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10 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars plain and simple, 26 Feb 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Glass Menagerie (Penguin Plays & Screenplays) (Paperback)
The layout of the play is easy to read and make notes on. There are useful notes at the front of the book to help understand the performance of the play. A perfect version if you are studying the play in school.
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