The Glass Menagerie with Amy Adams reviews – what did critics make of the production?

Reviews have dropped for the new West End production of The Glass Menagerie with Amy Adams – what did the critics make of it?

Directed by award-winning director Jeremy Herrin, the bold new staging explores the fragility and fallibility of memory in Tennessee Williams’ semi-autobiographical masterpiece.

Six-time Academy Award nominated and two-time Golden Globe winning actress Amy Adams takes on the role of one of Williams’s most iconic matriarchs Amanda Wingfield, a former Southern Belle living precariously with her two children, Tom and Laura, in a space between past and present

The new production, which also stars Tony award-nominee Paul Hilton, Tom Glynn-Carney, Lizzie Annis and Victor Alli, is now open at the Duke of York’s Theatre on 23 May 2022.

The Glass Menagerie London reviews

The Telegraph – 3/5
“To be blunt, I loved her performance. It’s clear, simple, believable, and quietly heart-breaking in its contained vulnerability. This is a single mum, remembered through the haunted memory of her narrating son in later life, doing her best: in cardy and patterned dress, hands clasped together, hair plainly arranged, she gently scolds her restless boy not least (a meta-irony) for constant movie-going.” – Read the full review

TimeOut – 3/5
“In the not unlikely event that you’re here to see Hollywood star Amy Adams do some good but not showy offy acting, you’re very much covered. But ‘The Glass Menagerie’ is one of the greatest plays ever written, and this is not its full, devastating potential.” – Read the full review

LondonTheatre – 3/5
“Adams, who is young for the role, is also surprisingly understated in her performance. Amanda doesn’t have to be played as a gorgon, however she is usually a larger-than-life character. Instead, a soft-voiced Adams gives us a vulnerable but heroically determined single mother – a much more generous reading, and one with some genuinely touching moments.” – Read the full review

The Stage – 3/5
“Tears seem to perpetually be welling in Adams’ eyes, although her Amanda smiles to cover it up. Even when her lines are overbearing, sometimes cruel, she delivers them in a fragile one-note, pitched somewhere between head and chest voice that seems to make her warble. There’s a bit of youth left to Adams’ Amanda. She isn’t just faded but faded before her time. It’s all very sad and understated, but it doesn’t always land. Some of the great lines feel like missed opportunities.” – Read the full review

WhatsOnStage – 3/5
“As Amanda Wingfield, the southern matriarch concerned with the future of her children above all else, Amy Adams is like an irate, bustling dormouse, folding her paws to herself or endlessly fidgeting. This production dials up the fondness for her old-worldly character: her querulously thin voice works, with just how still everything else is. More force would overwhelm things.” – Read the full review

The Guardian – 2/5
“Tennessee Williams’s narrator begins by speaking of all the ways a ‘memory play’ conjures its effects: dim lighting, sentimentality, a lack of realism. This production uses those artifices and also boasts central star casting in Amy Adams, yet stops short of putting us under its spell.” – Read the full review

London Evening Standard – 2/5
“[Adams]’s not bad, just unremarkable in a role that strikes a single, clanging note of hysterical gentility throughout. Amanda exists in a state of brittle desperation, simultaneously cajoling and alienating her children. The part doesn’t offer glamour, and Adams misses what dramatic nuance there is to be found in it.” – Read the full review

The Glass Menagerie plays Duke of York’s Theatre, London currently booking through to 27 August 2022.

Book The Glass Menagerie London tickets here »

The standard performance schedule is Monday-Saturday at 7:30PM with 2:30PM matinees on Thursdays and Saturdays.