The Glass Menagerie – Deluxe Centennial Edition - Hardcover

Williams, Tennessee; Kushner, Tony; Duncan, Robert; Hale, Allean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811219038 ISBN 13: 9780811219037

Publisher: New Directions, 2011

Synopsis

The Glass Menagerie marked a crucial turning point in American theater, and forever changed the life of its then unknown author. Williams's elegiac master- piece brought a radical new lyricism to Broadway -- the tragedy, fragility, and tenderness of this "memory play" have made it one of America's most powerful, timeless, and compelling plays. The introduction by Tony Kushner sparkles with the kind of rich, unique insight that only a fellow playwright could convey.

The Deluxe Centennial Edition includes:
- Tony Kushner's astonishing introduction.
- The pioneering essay, "The Homosexual in Society," by Tennessee's friend Robert Duncan, and poems by Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, Walt Whitman, and Tennessee Williams, which Kushner discusses as sources of inspiration.
- "The Pretty Trap," a cheerful one-act run-up to The Glass Menagerie.
- "The Portrait of a Girl in Glass," Tennessee's short-story variation of the play
- Photographs of great actresses who have played Amanda, and stills from various stage and film incarnations of The Glass Menagerie.
- Williams's classic essay about fame, "The Catastrophe of Success."
- The playwright's original "Production Notes."
- The 1944 opening-night rave reviews from Chicago.
- An essay by the distinguished Williams scholar Allean Hale, "Inside The Menagerie," provides autobiographical particulars about Williams's family life in St. Louis.
- A gorgeous new jacket design by Rodrigo Corral.

About this title

Review:

The revolutionary newness of The Glass Menagerie . . . was in its poetic lift, but an underlying hard dramatic structure was what earned the play its right to sing poetically. -- Arthur Miller

With the advent of The Glass Menagerie . . . Tennessee Williams emerged as a poet-playwright and a unique new force in theatre throughout the world. -- Lyle Leverich in Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams

Delicate and perceptive, The Glass Menagerie inhabits a half-world between comedy and tragedy. "

Seeing The Glass Menagerie was like stumbling on a flower in a junkyard Williams had pushed language and character to the front of the stage as never before. --Arthur Miller"

About the Author:

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) is the acclaimed author of many books of letters, short stories, poems, essays, and a large collection of plays, including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, and The Rose Tattoo.

Tony Kushner is the author of over two dozen plays, including Angels in America, for which he received the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for the best play of 1993.

Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was a 20th century American poet affiliated with the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement.

Allean Hale, writer and poet, was the leading authority on the early life and late plays of Tennessee Williams.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0811219038
• ISBN 13: 9780811219037
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224