The Glass Menagerie

Another Sunday, another film night with our sophisticated and high minded culture-vulture chums.

Well, what actually happened was Dong and Shazzerooneypoos turned up complete with interesting and scrummy nibbly things (roasted salted broad beans and chocolate dinosaurs, would you believe). Dozybean and EarMatt were already in-situ and we watched the 1973 television adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play "The Glass Menagerie" starring the always wonderful Katherine Hepburn.

A tremendous performance by Hepburn in a very demanding (and, I guess, very fulfilling) role as the rather unhinged Amanda Wingfield, mother to Laura, a mildly physically disabled and probably autistic daughter and Tom, the dissatisfied dreamer of a son who has effectively sacrificed his own life up until now to keep the household together.

You'll have guessed that it's fairly intense stuff and there's precious few lighter moments. Watching this play is something akin to watching a car crash in slow motion. All in all a fascinating study of inner workings of a seriously dysfunctional family and something of a period piece in that many of the attitudes and hang-ups that Amanda Wingfield suffers from could only be displayed by a woman from that particular vintage.

The overall vote seemed to be that we enjoyed the production, although Dozybean (who studied the play at A level) reckoned there were too many alterations to the original script and that Hepburn's performance occasionally portrayed too much comedic value.

Needless to say we emptied a bottle or three of Bordeaux after the film which may have encouraged some undignified behaviour from one or two elements who had occupied the cheap seats during the screening: