Two years after staging Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, MTC tackles his breakthrough work, The Glass Menagerie, which the company previously presented in 2004.

Directed by Mark Wilson, and starring the ever-remarkable Alison Whyte, this new production is engaging but overemphasises the comedy to the detriment of the play’s tragedy.

The Glass Menagerie: Harry McGee, Alison Whyte, Tim Draxl and Millie Donaldson. Photo © Pia Johnson

Premiering in Chicago in 1944, The Glass Menagerie looks back on a pivotal period for the Wingfield family, struggling financially and emotionally in 1930s St Louis. Bookending this memory play with present-day monologues, Tom recalls being a frustrated poet working in a warehouse to support his mother Amanda and sister Laura.

The former is a faded Southern belle whose husband departed long ago. Desperate for her children to prosper, Amanda fusses over Tom, who is always out late, ostensibly watching movies, and withdrawn, physically disabled Laura. She has little interest beyond old records and her glass-animal collection.

Believing marriage is her daughter’s only hope, Amanda persuades Tom to invite his colleague Jim home for dinner....