Camel City Playhouse opens The Glass Menagerie, and Leprechaun was lucky

The Camel City Playhouse raises the curtain on its production of the classic Tennessee Williams drama The Glass Menagerie at 7 p.m. Thursday. The play runs through March 19 at 110 W. Seventh Street, Winston-Salem. Showtimes are 7 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased here: https://camelcityplayhouse.com/ tickets-2/

The Glass Menagerie is a semi-autobiographical drama set in St. Louis during the late 1930s. Amanda Wingfield is a faded Southern belle, abandoned long ago by her husband, who has tenaciously raised their children Tom and Laura by herself. But in doing so, she has unwittingly alienated them with her smothering love. Tom and Laura adore their mother but also wish to be free of her intense attention, realizing that she has imparted many of her neuroses upon them. It is a timeless depiction of a quintessentially dysfunctional family, rife with passion and pain, longing and loss.

The original 1944 stage production did not receive unanimous raves when it premiered in Chicago, but made the move to Broadway and won the 1945 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award as Best American Play. That accolade, combined with a lengthy run (over a year), established Williams as a frontrank dramatist and essentially made his career. The play has been revived countless times and has also enjoyed several screen versions, the most recent being