Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie' has been an audience favourite since it premiered in 1944. This month, it comes to The PumpHouse in a new production from Foolish Wit Theatre.

Tom Wingfield is stuck. He works a job he hates, goes to the movies just to get out of the house, and comes home to his suffocating mother, Amanda, and his fragile sister, Laura. Into this already unsettled household comes a gentleman caller for Laura, invited home by Tom at his mother's insistence.

"It's one of those plays where you can see yourself in every character, even when none of them is particularly likeable," says the play's director, James Bell.

Williams called it a memory play, and James has taken that seriously. With no specific period costumes and imaginary food (a stage note from the original script), the production doesn't try to be realistic. It moves fast, the world slightly dreamlike, leaning into both the memory metaphor and the universality of the Wingfield family's experience. Audiences should expect to laugh, and then feel the ground shift under them before they've noticed it happening.

The four-person cast brings a range of experience to the production. Taku Chiketa, who played Mr Wickham in Foolish Wit's 'Pride and Prejudice', takes on the central role of Tom. Shivaun Statham, who impressed audiences as midwife Elizabeth Luke in Foolish Wit's 2023 production of 'The Welkin', plays the formidable Amanda. Tash Allen takes on the quiet Laura, and Chris Wheeler rounds out the cast as Jim, the gentleman caller. Both Tash and Chris are returning to the stage after a break from acting, bringing a freshness to the material that James says has been a real asset in rehearsal. With a short rehearsal period, the pressure to be off-book early is real, but the cast has thrown themselves into it. They've been helping with props and heading out op-shopping with the costume designer to find pieces that fit the world the design team has created. "It's a real actor's play," James says. "There are no big moments. It's all in the subtle expressions and reactions, the things that don't get said."

James has been making theatre on the North Shore for over 20 years, directing for Shoreside Theatre, Mairangi Players and the company he co-founded, Foolish Wit Theatre. The company was founded in 2015 with a straightforward ambition: to make great theatre and pay the people who make it, even if it's only a modest amount. The profit-share model extends beyond the cast to the technicians, stage managers and designers who make a production work. In ten years, the company has tackled everything from Arthur Miller and 'The Vagina Monologues' to 'A Christmas Carol', with recent productions including 'The Welkin', 'A Doll's House', 'Little Women' and 'Pride and Prejudice', all at The PumpHouse Theatre.

'The Glass Menagerie' plays at The PumpHouse Theatre, Takapuna, from 29 April to 3 May, with matinees on Saturday and Sunday.
Don't leave it too long. Tickets from pumphouse.co.nz