Written by Tennessee Williams

Directed by Andrew Panton

Review by Dominic Corr

Dundee Rep

A poised yet piercing revival, The Glass Menagerie at Dundee Rep (in co-production with Citizens Theatre and the Royal Lyceum) offers a production of shimmering restraint and emotional bite, balancing refinement with a raw undercurrent that keeps Tennessee Williams’ classic alive and urgent.

Williams’ semi-autobiographical memory play has long been a touchstone of 20th-century drama, its fragile world of dreams and disappointments endlessly reinterpreted. In this new staging, Dundee Rep’s Artistic Director Andrew Panton leads a creative team that leans into the play’s delicacy while refusing to let it drift into sentimentality. The result is theatre of polish and precision, but with a serrated edge that cuts through the nostalgia.

At the centre of the production is Amy Conachan as Laura Wingfield, a performance of remarkable subtlety. Conachan captures Laura’s vulnerability without reducing her to fragility alone. There’s a quiet wit in her delivery, a sense of inner life that resists the caricature of the “delicate sister.” Her scenes with Declan Spaine’s Jim O’Connor are the evening’s highlight: tender, awkward, and devastatingly human. The entire second act’s conversation between them is enthralling as Spaine brings warmth and optimism to Jim, making his eventual retreat all the more painful.

As Tom, Christopher Jordan-Marshall shoulders the dual role of narrator and participant with conviction. His Tom is restless, sardonic, and brimming with suppressed rage, yet Jordan-Marshall never loses sight of the character’s yearning for escape. His direct addresses to the audience are delivered with a conspiratorial intimacy, drawing us into the memory play’s shifting terrain. Sara Stewart, meanwhile, commands the stage as Amanda Wingfield. Her Amanda is not merely overbearing but layered with charm, desperation, and flashes of vulnerability. Stewart’s ability to pivot from comic fussiness to raw pleading ensures Amanda remains both exasperating and heartbreakingly human.

Panton’s direction is marked by clarity and confidence. He resists the temptation to over-embellish, instead allowing the text’s rhythms to breathe. Yet within this restraint lies a willingness to take risks: silences are stretched, confrontations are allowed to simmer, and the production never rushes to explain itself. This refusal to spoon-feed the audience pays dividends, creating a sense of complicity as we piece together the fractured memories.

Visually, the production is striking. Emily James’ set design exposes additional elements gradually, a domestic space that seems to shift and dissolve as the play progresses. The use of gauze and reflective surfaces creates a sense of impermanence, as though the Wingfield apartment might vanish at any moment. Simon Wilkinson’s lighting design heightens this effect, bathing the stage in hues that move from warm lamplight to stark, isolating shadows. Lighting and colour is used sparingly but effectively, hinting at the outside world that Tom longs for and Laura fears. The gradual transformation of the set mirrors the play’s emotional trajectory, from the apparent solidity of family life to the shattering of illusions.

If there is a weakness, it lies in the pacing. At just over two and a half hours, the production occasionally lingers too long on moments that could be tightened. The languor suits the play’s dreamlike quality, but there are stretches where momentum falters. A sharper edit might have heightened the impact of the climactic scenes. Still, the final moments, with Tom’s anguished farewell and Laura’s quiet extinguishing of the candles, all land with devastating force, grounding the play once more in the Highland setting that frames this tour and reminding us of the inescapable pull of place and memory.

What emerges is a production of refined intensity: elegant in its design, meticulous in its performances, yet never so polished that it loses its sting. Panton and his team honour Williams’ lyricism while ensuring the play speaks to contemporary audiences, not as a relic but as a living, breathing work.

---