Tennessee Williams described his breakthrough hit The Glass Menagerie as a memory play in order to facilitate unconventional treatments (as well as avoid claims that it was too autobiographical), and director Atri Banerjee’s expressionistic production not only takes full advantage, but potentially takes a few liberties too.

The play is set in 1930s America but the bare stage (save for a few glass ornament nick-nacks) provides no indication of the fact, while painfully shy daughter Laura escapes the world by listening to her Walkman and a dreamlike dance sequence with potential suitor Jim is accompanied by the sounds of Whitney Houston. Memory has a habit of playing tricks, but 50-year time lapses might be a bit much for the purists.

Oh hold on, maybe that’s why the revolving neon sign that towers over the stage is alternating between clockwise and anti-clockwise directions (it also changes speed based on the pace of the action), all the while proclaiming Paradise, the name of a nearby dance hall but also the dream tantalisingly beyond all the play’s tragic protagonists.

The fatalistic four also include Tom Wingfield, whose narration – and potentially unreliable recollection – forms the backbone of the piece, and his mother Amanda, who not only towers over proceedings like that ubiquitous sign but is living in her own past, and past glories (more memories) herself.

Geraldine Somerville excels in the role of the overbearing Southern Belle matriarch desperately trying to find happiness for (and through) her under-achieving offspring, and she’s matched by a superb cast in a beautifully-pitched production that mixes pathos and melancholy with wistful amusement, often through movement as much as the wordy dialogue. Because for all the chatter – and there's a lot of it – the tragic tale is also told by the way characters circle each other as well as the spherical stage. It arguably overcooks the revolving hands motif but provides a nice hint at the continuous, rather than linear, nature of time.

And as much as the characters are often physically and emotionally remote – Amanda’s disappointment overshadows any love for her children – when they stray into each other’s orbits there are genuine connections, particularly during the blossoming romance between Jim and Laura (Zacchaeus Kayode and Natalie Kimmerling) but especially when Tom’s compassion for his sister overflows at the finale – I doubt Kasper Hilton-Hille was the only one wiping away a tear when the lights went up.

In his programme notes Banerjee suggests each of our successive recollections becomes less precise – like a cassette played too many times in that Walkman – but this production is likely to linger long in the memory of any that see it.

4 stars

Reviewed by Steve Adams at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry on Wednesday 20 March. The Glass Menagerie continues to show at the venue until Saturday 23 March.