A lyrical treasure that changed the landscape of the American theater and introduced the world to one of its greatest playwrights, The Glass Menagerie is a nostalgic, heart-achingly poignant play unlike anything else Tennessee Williams was to write. Williams not only crafts his most autobiographical play with stunning honesty and vulnerability, but also introduces us to some of the most powerful and resonant characters ever to be realized on stage: Amanda, the determined, suffocating mother, a southern belle whose own disappointments fuel her desire to create a different life for her children; Laura, whose disabling shyness compels her to retreat into a private world populated with delicate glass creatures and old phonograph records; Jim O’Connor, the much-anticipated gentleman caller, a high school success story struggling to live up to his past; and Tom, the stand-in for the author himself, the frustrated writer caught between his sense of obligation to his mother and sister and his own passionate need to escape from the tedium of the workaday world to a place of adventure and fulfillment.