The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny will host a production of Tenessee Williams’ classic play, The Glass Menagerie, as part of the show’s six venue national tour.
TheatreCorp and the Town Hall Theatre Galway are presenting a new production of one of Williams’ finest plays, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great American playwright. It runs at the Watergate Theatre from Friday 25 to Saturday 26 February inclusive, at 8pm.
Written in 1944, The Glass Menagerie was Williams’ first successful play and its plot is well-known.
A son longs to escape from his stifling home, where his genteel mother worries about the future prospects of his lame, shy sister. As the family works hard to survive, the mother struggles to free herself of a dependent daughter, while she uses her own fantasies of a glamorous past in the Deep South to keep her own reality bearable. Her son meanwhile tries desperately to keep his own dreams alive.
The Glass Menagerie is based on Tennessee Williams’ own guilt-ridden attempt to flee his mother in order to claim his artistic destiny. The enduring figure of Williams’ mother dominates the play: elusive yet seductive, nostalgic for patrician Southern life, fascinating yet repelling.
The production is directed by Max Hafler, with set design by Mary Doyle.
The cast features actress Maria McDermottroe in the central role of the mother. Maria is a veteran of many plays at the Abbey Theatre including Dancing at Lughnasa, Philadelphia Here I Come and Portia Coughlin. She recently appeared in Boss Grady’s Boys at the Gaiety and in a one woman show, Bag Lady, at the Focus. The cast also includes Marcus Lamb who performed in several plays with Druid as part of the DruidSynge project, Sean O’ Meallaigh, a regular on TG4 series such as Ros na Rún, Seachtar na Casca and Rasaí na Gaillimhe; and Ionia Ní Chroinín, best known for her work with Moonfish Theatre Company.
Max Hafler has previously directed a series of classic plays with the Town Hall Theatre Galway including The Maids by Genet, Blood Wedding by Garcia Lorca, Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett and Doctor Faustus by Marlowe.
Booking is now open at the Watergate, at 056 7761674.
