A return to the radical
You may have read the play in high school or seen a local production. After all, in the more than six decades since its debut, Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” has joined the canon of great American theater. But over the course of countless stagings, the play also may have lost much of its evocative, unpredictable clout. In a discussion at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on Monday titled “An Evening with John Tiffany,” the director and Diane Paulus ’88 argued that Williams’ unconventionality has been watered down over the years. Paulus, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), and Tiffany RI ’11, who will direct the A.R.T.’s upcoming production of the play, intend to honor the work’s original, groundbreaking spirit. Their production will mark the first time that the A.R.T. has produced a Williams play. “We’ve presented a production or two,” said Paulus, “but we’ve never self-generated and made...