Shropshire’s newest professional repertory company and the first in Shrewsbury since the 1950s, The Wightman Theatre Company is to produce Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie at the town’s Wightman Theatre.
The company aims to “present a rolling programme of tried and tested plays by established playwrights alongside innovative and / or interactive adaptations of classics and new writing”.
The Glass Menagerie, which is set in pre-World War II America, features Laura, a young woman with a limp caused by polio and a nervous insecurity about the outside world. She spends much of her time polishing and arranging a collection of glass animals. Her mother Amanda is obsessed with finding Laura a husband. A long-awaited caller will either fulfil or shatter the family’s delicate dreams.
The cast comprises Carol Caffrey as Amanda, Emily Rose Hurdiss as Laura, Lucas Smith as Jim and William Holstead as Tom.
The play runs at the Wightman Theatre from Saturday 21 until Saturday 28 April. It will be the first of three professional plays to be staged at the Shrewsbury theatre. Patrick Garland’s Brief Lives will take to the stage from 1 until 11 May and Hay Fever by Noël Coward will follow from 22 May until 2 June.
The theatre, which has had many uses over the years, reopened in 2015 as an arts and events venue. It has a capacity of 180 seats.