If you see this show you’ll want to see it again – directed properly: The Glass Menagerie, at the Duke of York’s Theatre, reviewed

The Glass Menagerie directed by Jeremy Herrin is a bit of an eyeball-scrambler. The action takes place on a huge black platform flanked by 1930s antiques: a typewriter, a broken piano, a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a smattering of Anglepoise lamps. This cryptic setting suggests that the play is being developed in a Museum of the Great Depression, and the show we are seeing is the latest rehearsal. It’s not clear what purpose is served by this fiddly imposture. And although the act of sabotage doesn’t quite destroy the show, it’s touch and go during the opening 20 minutes.

Herrin has shared the role of Tom between two actors. Tom Glynn-Carney is a character who participates in the action and Paul Hilton is a narrator who explains the drama to us. Hilton, a talented thesp, has been asked to disrupt his colleagues by miming and mugging from the fringes throughout each scene.