It will begin performances March 4, ahead of an official opening March 11 at Salisbury Playhouse, where it will run through March 20.
It will subsequently tour to Watford Palace Theatre (March 23-27), Liverpool Playhouse (April 7-10), Cambridge Arts Theatre (April 13-17), Oxford Playhouse (April 20-24), Glasgow Citizens' Theatre (April 27-May 1) and Theatre at the Mill in Newtonabbey (May 5-8).
The production is directed by Polly Teale, joint artistic director of Shared Experience, for which she previously wrote and directed Mine in 2008. She won the Best Director Award at the 2003 Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her staging of After Mrs. Rochester.
According to press materials, her new production of The Glass Menagerie will explore the inner world of memory as Williams himself returns to confront the past, and his family come to haunt the stage. Set in St. Louis at the heart of the American Depression, Amanda clings to memories of her idyllic youth in the South. With her husband long gone and her own days of courtship over, she is determined to find her daughter a husband. But Laura is painfully shy; she plays with her collection of glass animals and lives in a world of her own. Amanda's son Tom (based on Williams), an aspiring poet in a dead-end job, secretly dreams of escape. But when he is given the task of finding a suitable gentleman caller for his sister, it is an evening that will be forever imprinted on their memories.
The full cast comprises Imogen Stubbs (Trevor Nunn's film of Twelfth Night, and productions of St. Joan and Closer in the West End, and Betrayal and The Relapse at the National Theatre) as the mother and faded Southern Belle Amanda Wingfield; Patrick Kennedy (seen in the films "Atonement" and "Me and Orson Welles") as Tom, Emma Lowndes (Bella in BBC's "Cranford" series) as Laura and Kyle Soller (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Globe Theatre tour 2009) as the Gentleman Caller. The production is designed by Naomi Dawson. With lighting by Colin Grenfell, video design by Thomas Grey and music by Peter Salem.
To book tickets for the run at Salisbury Playhouse, contact the box office on 01722 320333, or visit www.salisburyplayhouse.com. For more touring details, visit www.sharedexperience.org.uk.
