A Young Vic production
The Glass Menagerie
By Tennessee Williams
Contents
1.
Tennessee Williams
2
2.
The Works of Tennessee Williams
8
3.
Synopsis
10
4.
Cast and Creative Team
14
5.
The Glass Menagerie
15
6.
The Great Depression
21
7.
The Deep South
24
8.
The American Play
26
9.
Bibliography
31
If you have any questions or comments about this Resource Pack please contact us:
The Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London, SE1 8LZ
T: 020 7922 2800 F: 020 7922 2801 e: info@youngvic.org
Compiled by: Adam Penford
Young Vic 2010
First performed at the Young Vic on Thursday 11th November 2010
Rehearsal photographs by Simon Annand
The Young Vic Teachers Programme is supported by:
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A Young Vic production
The Glass Menagerie
By Tennessee Williams
1. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. His
early childhood was spent in the relative luxury of the prosperous plantation states, especially Clarksdale,
Mississippi, where his maternal grandfather, a local priest, was well known and respected in the
community. His sister, Rose, was two years older than him and the siblings were inseparable. Williams’
father, Cornelius, was a travelling salesman and spent much of his time away. Williams’ parents did not
have a happy relationship. Cornelius was a heavy drinker and it was well-known in the family that he
enjoyed extra-marital relations and playing poker whilst working away. Williams’ mother, Edwina, was a
hysterical person, possibly mentally unstable, who would chatter away incessantly and dream of
grandeur. Her family had hoped she would make a match with one of the sons of the local prosperous
plantation owners; however, she had fallen in love with the initially charming salesman and spent her life
regretting her decision, believing she had married beneath herself (see Chapter 7). She mollycoddled her
son, to her husband’s annoyance who constantly teased him for being effeminate. However, her
pretensions had one positive influence, as she introduced the children to classic literature including
Dickens and Shakespeare, and Williams fell in love with the poetic language.
Tennessee Williams
The family conflict intensified when Cornelius was given a permanent managerial position at the
International Shoe Company. He stopped touring and the family moved from the countryside to the
metropolitan St. Louis, Missouri. The inevitable conflict caused by Cornelius’ sudden presence in the
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household led to the bullying of his wife and son even more than before. In turn, Edwina, always
controlling and manipulative towards her children, increased her hate campaign against her husband by
constantly warning her son and daughter of the perils of marrying the wrong kind of person. She longed
for a return to her previous life and spent more and more time dreaming about returning to her former
elevated social existence. The situation was further exacerbated when in 1919 they had another son,
Dakin, and their financial position worsened. Williams had enrolled at Soldan High School when they had
first moved to the city but after Dakin’s birth the family moved to a lower-class area of the city and he
transferred to the University City High School. The family were now living in a cramped two bedroom
apartment in an overcrowded block such as the one immortalised in The Glass Menagerie. Despite the
upheaval, Williams still studied hard, particularly in English, winning prizes for essay writing
competitions and succeeded in publishing a short story in a magazine aged 17.
In 1929 the Great Depression hit and the family’s financial position worsened (see Chapter 6). Williams
had enrolled at the University of Missouri but was forced to drop out to bring some money into the
household, exacerbated by his father’s annoyance that his son had failed military training at the college.
Cornelius got him a job packing boxes at the International Shoe Company. Although he detested the
work, Williams used his time there as inspiration for future plays. The lead character Stanley Kowalski in
A Streetcar Named Desire takes his name from a Polish worker in the factory and the parallels between
Williams’ frustrations and those of the character of Tom in The Glass Menagerie are evident. As the
recession lessened the family moved out of the apartment to a two storey house and Williams was
allowed to return to education. He enrolled at Washington University, Missouri and joined various
theatre groups, acting and writing plays. The first of these, in 1935, was the one-act Cairo! Shanghai!
Bombay! and later Spring Storm (which was revived by the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, and
transferred to the National Theatre earlier this year). In 1937 however he stormed out of the college
after a play he had submitted in a writing competition was only awarded fourth place. He then signed up
to the University of Iowa where he finally gained his degree in 1938, also the year he wrote what many
describe as his first professional play, Not About Nightingales. The following year he abandoned his birth
name, adopting the more sophisticated Tennessee - the state where his father was born.
As Williams concentrated on his education and trying to kick-start his writing career, he spent less time
with his family, particularly his older sister Rose who during this time she was diagnosed with
schizophrenia. Rose is frequently thought be have been a nervous and weak person as it is well known
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that Williams based the character of Laura in The Glass Menagerie on her. Dakin however later
commented that Rose was a loud, bubbly person who, like her mother, enjoyed talking. Biographers often
note the importance of an argument between her and Tennessee in her mental decline when he told her
she was ugly. The following day Rose attacked her father with a knife. Her parents had hoped that
marriage would ground their daughter but although she received attention from several young men, no
serious relationship was forthcoming. Rose had a fear of sex which originated from her mother’s own
prudish attitude and which she hysterically shared with the children from an early age, (Tennessee was to
remain a virgin himself until aged 25). By her mid-twenties, Rose felt unloved and was incapable of
keeping a job; she fell into depression. Her mental health grew worse and she would frequently scream
obscenities and talk nonsense. Edwina in particular could not cope with the unladylike behaviour of her
daughter and in 1937 institutionalised her in the Farmington State Mental Hospital. She would remain
in psychiatric hospitals for the rest of her life. Williams would never forgive himself for not having been
there at the time his sister needed him most. He would remain forever paranoid about his own mental
health and began to drink and take sleeping pills; he would eventually become dependent on both. The
theme of mental illness runs throughout his plays, from Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire to
Catherine in Suddenly, Last Summer.
In the late 1930s, Williams moved around the US. The liberal atmosphere of cities such as New Orleans,
Louisiana and Provincetown, Massachusetts, allowed him to explore his homosexuality for the first time.
His first sexual affair was with a dancer called Kip. When Kip left him to get married, Williams was
heartbroken. Despite personal setbacks, his literary career had a boost when he won a $1000 Rockefeller
grant, and had his first professional production, Battle of Angels, staged in Boston. It received disastrous
reviews and plans for a Broadway transfer were abandoned, but he did manage to secure a prestigious
agent, Audrey Wood [1905-1985], and in 1939 moved to New York at her suggestion to study
playwriting. He rented a cheap flat and worked during the day to make money in a series of banal jobs,
staying up all night to write a series of one act plays. His flatmate at the time remembers him drinking
endless cups of coffee and smoking endless cigarettes to stay awake. Despite winning a few competitions
with cash prizes, money was scarce and in 1943 his agent secured him a job as a screenwriter at MetroGoldwyn-Mayer’s film studios in Hollywood. Whilst there Williams wrote a screenplay called The
Gentleman Caller, an early version of The Glass Menagerie, which the studio considered making but
Williams disagreed with their proposed casting choices. The Hollywood system employed hundreds of
artists, including screenwriters, many more than was needed for the number of films they actually
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produced, and most never had their work realised. Williams found the system frustrating and did not
enjoy Los Angeles. After six months his trial contract expired and was not renewed and Williams
returned to New York. The same year, 1943, Edwina authorised for Rose to undergo a frontal lobotomy1,
a pioneering surgery, in an attempt to cure her. Rose was left permanently incapacitated and, for the
second time in his life, Williams felt incredible guilt for putting his career ahead of his sister.
In 1944 Williams completed The Glass Menagerie and it opened at the Civic Theatre, Chicago to strong
reviews. The production transferred to the Playhouse Theatre on Broadway the following year where it
became the hit of the season. It ran for 561 performances, winning its author many awards including a
prestigious Critics’ Circle Award. He followed it later in the year with an adaptation of a short story by
D. H. Lawrence [1885-1930], You Touched Me! The reviews were noncommittal and Williams became
disillusioned. Soon afterwards however he started a relationship with Frank Merlo, a second-generation
Sicilian American, who was to become his only lasting partner. Merlo provided Williams with the
stability he needed to keep his various addictions under control and during their relationship he produced
some of his most famous plays. Williams’ profits from The Glass Menagerie allowed the couple to move
to the peaceful Florida Quays (a chain of islands off the Florida Peninsula) where Williams would spend
all day writing whilst Merlo took care of everything else. The first play that emerged in this period was A
Streetcar Named Desire which was to become the writer’s most famous work. It was directed by Elia
Kazan [1909-2003] who would become Williams’ long-term collaborator directing the premieres of most
of his hit plays as well as subsequent film adaptations. A Streetcar Named Desire was an instant critical
and box office success and won its author a succession of awards.
Over the next decade Williams produced a series of critically acclaimed hits. Summer and Smoke (1948)
was followed by The Rose Tattoo (1950), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus
Descending (1957), Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment
(1960), Night of the Iguana (1961) and The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1962). Many of
these plays were also adapted for the cinema and starred some of the greatest actors of the period
including Paul Newman [1925-2008], Elizabeth Taylor [1932-] and Marlon Brando [1924-2004].
Williams did not handle his success very well. He felt the pressure to ensure each play equalled the last
and became paranoid that his acquaintances were only his friends because of his wealth. He coped with
1
A lobotomy is a surgical procedure that involves severing nerve tracts in the brain. It was formerly used to treat mental
disorders but is now rarely performed.
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By Tennessee Williams
the weight of fame by drinking more and becoming ever more reliant on sleeping pills. Despite Merlo’s
commitment to him, Williams had never managed to be faithful to Merlo, his head was constantly turned
by younger men, and as his alcoholism grew worse during the early 1960s, Merlo ended the relationship.
Soon after the break-up, Merlo was diagnosed with lung cancer and died a year later. Williams could not
cope with his former partner’s death and plunged into deep depression.
Williams’ self esteem suffered further blows over the next few years as his worse fear became true and he
produced a row of flops. Titles such as Slapstick Tragedy (1966), The Two-Character Play (1967), The
Kingdom of Earth (1968), Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968) and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) are
now virtually forgotten. Critics condemned him as washed-up and Williams became ever more paranoid
and bitter. He sacked his long-term agent and friend, Audrey Wood, in an embarrassingly public attack.
He suffered a nervous breakdown and in 1969, Dakin Williams committed his elder brother to a
psychiatric ward to deal with his addictions. He also persuaded him to be re-baptised - religiosity was
something Dakin inherited from his mother - in an attempt to save his soul. In 1970 Williams attempted
to re-launch his career by appearing on television on the David Frost Show (a popular US chat show) to
persuade the world he was rehabilitated and ready to start writing again. Ironically, it was apparent to
the interviewer and audience that the writer was clearly drunk but he still managed to charm the
audience and host. In 1975 he published his life story, Memoirs, which provoked much attention in the
press, particularly for its candid reports of Williams’ sexuality. (Williams later claimed the publishers
had edited out anything that was not sensational and released a longer edition which did not focus so
much on sex.) Williams continued to produce plays during the 1970s and early 80s. Some received fair
press, but nothing to match the success of his earlier work, and he never overcame his bitterness or
drinking habit.
Williams died on the 25th of February, 1983 in the Hotel Elysee, New York. He was 71. The
circumstances of his death were confusing. The official report stated that he had died by choking on the
cap of a bottle of eye drops and people close to the writer revealed that he had a habit of placing the cap
in his mouth whilst he leaned back to apply the drops. Police reports also stated that prescription drugs
were found in the hotel room and the writer had been drinking at the time of his death. Dakin Williams
always claimed that his brother had been murdered although no evidence seemed to support this verdict.
The author left his literary rights to the University of the South where his grandfather had studied. Rose
Williams was the other sole benefactor of the Williams’ estate. She remained in a mental institution until
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her death in 1996 when she too bequeathed her $7 million inheritance to the university. It was not until
the 1990s that the theatre industry in American and Europe began to revive Williams’ later work that
had been so harshly condemned during Tennessee’s lifetime. He is now recognised as one of the greatest
twentieth century American playwrights who changed the direction of world theatre.
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The Glass Menagerie
By Tennessee Williams
2. THE WORKS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Tennessee Williams’ output was prolific during his forty year career. Alongside the major plays and
novels listed below, he also wrote many short stories and over 70 one-act plays.
Plays
1936 Candles to the Sun
1937 Spring Storm
Fugitive Kind
1938 Not About Nightingales
1941 I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix
1944 The Glass Menagerie
1945 You Touched Me
1947 Stairs to the Roof
A Streetcar Named Desire
1948 Summer and Smoke
1951 The Rose Tattoo
1953 Camino Real
1955 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
1957 Orpheus Descending
1958 Suddenly, Last Summer
1959 Sweet Bird of Youth
1960 Period of Adjustment
1961 The Night of the Iguana
1963 The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
1965 The Mutilated
1968 The Seven Descents of Myrtle
1969 In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel
Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis?
1972 Small Craft Warnings
1973 The Two-Character Play
1975 The Red Devil Battery Sign
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1976 This is (An Entertainment)
1977 Vieux Carre
1979 A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
1980 Clothes for a Summer Hotel
The Notebook of Trigorin
1981 Something Cloudy, Something Clear
1982 A House Not Meant to Stand
1983 In Masks Outrageous and Austere
Novels
1950 The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
1975 Moise and the World of Reason
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3. SYNOPSIS
Tom announces himself as the narrator of the production and describes it as a ‘memory’ play. He
introduces us to his mother (Amanda), sister (Laura) and the absent fourth character in the play, his
father, who abandoned the family and is represented by a portrait on the wall. He transports us back in
time to the cramped two-bedroom apartment of the family home in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1930s.
Tom joins his mother and sister at the family’s evening meal. The tension between Amanda and her son is
apparent as she nags him for eating too quickly and smoking too much. She encourages her daughter to
prepare for any potential ‘Gentlemen Callers’ that may theoretically visit her that evening. It is apparent
from Tom and Laura’s reaction that they think this is highly unlikely as Laura has never had any suitors.
Instead Amanda reminisces about her old life in the Deep South when she entertained a long line of
‘Gentlemen Callers’ and attended nightly parties. It is clear that she misses the glamour of her old life
and blames her absent husband for dragging her to the city and the cramped apartment they now live in.
Deborah Findlay as Amanda and Sinéad Matthews as Laura
Some weeks later Amanda arrives home and it is immediately apparent that she is angry at her daughter.
She has discovered that Laura has been pretending to attend Business College for the last six weeks.
Laura explains that she was so nervous on her first day that she was physically sick and subsequently too
embarrassed to return. Her mother despairs that Laura is too nervous to retain a job or find a husband.
Laura produces a high school yearbook and reveals there was once a boy, Jim, to whom she was
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attracted. We learn that she suffered from pleurisy as a child which left her partly disabled and with such
low esteem that she never made any friends. Laura’s insular world is evident as we watch her care for her
Glass Menagerie, a collection of little glass ornaments of animals, which are one of her only sources of
happiness.
Tom narrates that after discovering her daughter had dropped out of college, Amanda’s campaign to find
Laura a suitor intensified. She takes a telesales job selling a woman’s magazine to earn extra money
towards Laura’s dowry. Amanda complains of the little money Tom brings into the household and
questions where he goes when he claims to be at the cinema until the early hours of the morning every
night. Tom in turn argues that he is virtually the sole breadwinner and he hates working at the factory.
He dreams of being a writer and feels trapped and constantly under attack by his mother. At the climax
of the argument, he accidently breaks one of Laura’s ornaments and storms out. His mother swears she
will not speak to him again until he apologises.
Leo Bill as Tom
It is 5am and Tom is just arriving home from a night out. His claims that he has just been to the cinema
seem unlikely as it is so late and we are left to wonder where he does spend his evenings. The time jumps
forward two hours and Tom wakes to go to work. Tom heeds Laura’s pleas for him to apologise to
Amanda and she explains that she only nags because she cares. We are encouraged to empathise with her
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and consider that it must have been difficult bringing up the children after her husband abandoned the
family. Amanda reveals that she knows Tom is considering joining the Merchant Navy and implores him
to stay and support the family. She also asks Tom to help find his sister a suitor.
Tom is smoking on the fire exit and enviously watching the young people socialising at the Dance Hall
across the alleyway. Amanda joins him and Tom reveals that he enquired if a friend from the factory
would like to visit the family for dinner. Amanda is incredibly excited but goes into a panic when she
learns that the suitor, Jim, is expected the following evening. She questions Tom in detail about Jim’s
background and personality and then begins planning the meal and changes she can make to improve the
appearance of the apartment. She forces Laura to come out on to the fire escape and make a wish on the
moon.
Kyle Soller as Jim
It is the following day and the apartment has been spruced up. Amanda has dressed up for the occasion
and found Laura an old dress which she herself wore when she was courting. Amanda’s high spirits
contrast with Laura’s nerves. These intensify when her mother reveals that the name of their guest is Jim
O’Connor and it transpires that this is the student who Laura was attracted to at school. She tries to
retreat as the doorbell rings but Amanda forces her to answer it. Tom and Jim enter and Laura hides
away.
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The men discuss work and Jim reveals that he is taking classes in public speaking as he hopes to move up
the career ladder. Tom confides that he has used the money that had been put aside for the family’s
electricity bill to join the Navy. Amanda appears and her behaviour has transformed into that of a
flirtatious southern belle. Tom is mortified as she chatters away to Jim but he seems amused, rather than
embarrassed, at her behaviour. As a thunderstorm approaches, they take their seats for dinner and
Amanda forces Laura to join them. However, overtaken by nerves, Laura faints and Tom carries her to
the sofa to lie down. The others begin their meal as the rain starts to pour.
It is the end of the meal when the lights in the apartment suddenly go out. At first blaming the storm, it
soon becomes apparent to Amanda that Tom has failed to pay the electricity bill. She lights candles and
encourages Jim to go into the living room to chat to Laura. Laura is initially incredibly shy but Jim’s
warmth relaxes her and she soon reveals that they knew each other at high school and Jim vaguely
recalls her. She shows him the yearbook and Jim reminisces modestly about how popular and successful
he was in school and how he has so far failed to achieve his potential. Laura demonstrates how
comfortable she feels towards Jim by showing him her ‘Glass Menagerie’, he in return asks her to dance.
Laura is hesitant at first but then complies. The dance climaxes with Jim accidently breaking the glass
unicorn Laura had previously shown him and she shows a newly-found strength of character by reacting
calmly. Jim kisses Laura, and then, in a devastating blow, he immediately regrets his behaviour and
reveals that he is engaged to be married to another girl. Jim leaves as quickly as he can and Amanda, on
learning of his engagement, accuses Tom of playing a cruel trick. Tom protests his innocence and storms
out of the apartment.
Tom’s closing narrative to the audience admits that he left to join the Navy not long after that fateful
night. He reveals that he has not returned since and will never exorcise the guilt he feels about
abandoning his sister.
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4. CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM
Cast
Tom
Leo Bill
Amanda
Deborah Findlay
Laura
Sinéad Matthews
Jim
Kyle Soller
Creative Team
Direction
Joe Hill-Gibbins
Design
Jeremy Herbert
Costumes
Laura Hopkins
Lighting
James Farncombe
Music
Dario Marianelli
Sound
Mike Walker
Casting
Julia Horan
Dialect
Michaela Kennen
Choreographer
Arthur Pita
Assistant Director
Abigail Graham
Assistant Director
Rachel Bagshaw
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5. THE GLASS MENAGERIE
The Glass Menagerie was Tennessee William’s breakthrough play. It premiered at the Civic Theater in
Chicago on 26th December 1944 before transferring to the Playhouse Theater in New York the following
year, opening on 31 March. It ran for 561 performances (transferring mid-way through the run to the
Royal Theater) and won its author a host of awards. Williams became the most acclaimed and wellknown playwright on Broadway. Lewis Nichols, reviewing the play for the New York Times in April 1945
commented that “everything fits. The Glass Menagerie... is a pleasure to have in the neighbourhood”. All
reviewers gave great acclaim to the four actors, but it was Laurette Taylor’s [1884-1946] performance of
Amanda that received the rave reviews. Taylor had been a star of early cinema but had fallen out of
favour. Critics described her performance as perfection and in a recent survey of Broadway veterans, her
Amanda was voted almost unanimously as the most memorable stage performance of the last century.
The playbill for the original Broadway production
Unfortunately Taylor died in 1946 and the role was played by Gertrude Lawrence [1898-1952] in the
1950 film version. Williams was persuaded to enlarge the role of Amanda for the actress who was better
known for performing comic roles. The result was deemed disastrous by critics who felt her overblown,
burlesque performance shattered the delicacy of the original play. The film studio, Warner Brothers, also
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persuaded the director Irving Rapper [1898-1999] that the film needed an upbeat ending and it
concludes with Laura telling her brother that she forgives him for leaving and waiting, full of selfconfidence, for a second Gentleman Caller. There were two television film adaptations made in 1966 and
1973 (starring Katherine Hepburn [1907-2003]) respectively and in 1987 actor/director Paul Newman
[1925-2008] directed another film version starring John Malkovich [1953-] and Joanne Woodward
[1930-]. Newman’s film originated from a stage revival and was therefore very respectful to Williams’
original play but it was for this reason that most critics disliked the film, claiming that the poetical
language and actors’ performances seemed overtly theatrical on screen and the scenes appeared stiff and
old fashioned.
Eddie Dowling, Laurette Taylor and Julie Haydon in the original Broadway production of The Glass
Menagerie
Although the play has never adapted successfully to the screen, it remains one of the most popular stage
plays of the 20th century and is frequently revived. In this country alone, 2010 has already seen a touring
production by the theatre company Shared Experience which visited most of the major theatres in the
country and another production is playing at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick until November. The last
major production on Broadway was in 2005 when Jessica Lange [1949-] and Christian Slater [1969-]
performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The show, conceived by British director David Leveaux
[1957-], was not well received. Leveaux and his team had explored Williams’ concept of a ‘memory’ play
by building a set of semi-transparent gauzes which were gloomily lit and by using a score of abstract
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music. It was claimed that the actors had to fight against these elements to connect with the audience
and it was a battle they lost. It was also generally felt that Lange was too remote and lyrical for the
domineering character of Amanda. The last major London production opened at the Donmar Warehouse
in 1995 before transferring to the Comedy Theatre in the West End. Director Sam Mendes [1965-] cast
Zoe Wanamaker [1949-] as Amanda and Claire Skinner [1965-] as Laura. Both received strong critical
praise but Skinner in particular won the hearts of critics and audiences. The Financial Times called hers a
“luminous performance, arousing magnificent pity without ever becoming simply pitiful”. Mendes and his
designer, Rob Howell, built an extension to the onstage fire escape structure which wrapped around the
dress circle so that Tom could enter from the outside world into the family apartment, assisting the sense
of detachment needed for the role of Tom as narrator and reminding the audience that these are his
memories recalled from a later time.
One of the reasons that Williams’ play remains popular is that it still feels remarkably fresh due to it
containing many revolutionary theatrical devices. Williams called it a ‘memory play’ and uses the
character of Tom as a narrator to highlight that the audience is witnessing a selection of past events. The
play’s structure is episodic; although there is a narrative arc through the play, it is essentially constructed
as a series of scenes over a period of time and Williams never concerns himself with informing the
audience about how much time has elapsed between them. We are witnessing brief moments in a period
of a family’s life, almost like flicking through a photograph album. Williams termed it ‘plastic’ theatre by
which he meant that he did not want the production to be concerned with capturing every pernickety
detail of realism, (for example, he suggests in the stage directions the actors mime eating their meal).
He chose the term ‘plastic’ to suggest something malleable. (That we now associate plastic as cheap and
fake is perhaps unfortunate, in the 1930s it was still viewed as a revolutionary and modern material). He
believed that theatre should be theatrical, poetical and organic, an artistic interpretation of life rather
than a literal portrayal (such as we now see in soap operas for example).
“The straight realistic play with its genuine Frigidaire [home refrigerator] and authentic ice-cubes,
its characters who speak exactly as its audience speaks, corresponds to the academic landscape and has
the same virtue of a photographic likeness. Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the
photographic in art: that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can
represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than
those which were merely present in appearance.”
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Alongside the heightened language and structure Williams also made suggestions of how various
production elements could work towards this aim. This incorporated music, including a ‘Glass Menagerie’
theme, the use of gauze (a material which appears solid when lit from the front and becomes transparent
when lit from behind) for the walls of the apartment, and projections. Projections were used in two
different ways; images, both literal and interpretative, such as ’A sailing vessel with Jolly Roger’ for
when Jim talks about his lust for adventure, or ‘A swarm of typewriters’ when Laura talks of her
experience at Business College; the second was scene captions which both emphasised the characters’
emotions such as “Terror!” when Laura hears Tom and Jim arrive for dinner and thoughts such as “Not
Jim!” when Laura learns her Gentleman Caller shares the same name as her high school love. The
director of the original production, Elia Kazan [1909-2003], opted not to incorporate any of these
projections so we only know about them as Williams made the choice to include them in the published
text of the play. No major production has ever wholly incorporated them, although several amateur and
more experimental companies have. The 1995 Donmar Warehouse production did project scene titles,
although none corresponded to Williams’ suggestions. The writer does indicate in the text that future
directors should experiment with their own ideas.
Williams had studied playwriting in New York under Erwin Piscator [1893-1966], a German director
who used projections in his plays to prevent audiences from becoming too engulfed in the drama of a play
but instead analytically observe the characters and their actions. Piscator’s desire (like that of the now
more well-known German director, Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956], who also used scene titles for the same
reason) was to create political theatre which ultimately provoked the audience to seek actively a change
in their lives (usually against capitalist governments, many political theatre practitioners of the period
had socialist leanings). The effect of Williams’ ideas would certainly keep the audience detached from
the events on stage but many have since suggested that if the author had seen a production of his play
with these techniques invoked, he would have come to the conclusion that most directors of the play do
and realised that the work is more powerful without them.
The Glass Menagerie is the most autobiographical of all of Williams’ plays. It is clear that he struggled to
find a way to tell the story of his highly personal and painful early life as the play appeared under various
guises and titles during the early 1940s. If You Breathe, It Breaks was an unpublished story which told
the story of an Amanda Wingfield who had three children, including a sensitive girl with a ‘Glass
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Menagerie’, and explored the mother’s attempt to marry her off. This was followed by another short story
entitled Portrait of a Girl in Glass which was very similar to the eventual version of the script as written;
indeed many of the lines the characters speak in the play are directly taken from this edition. Williams
also wrote a screenplay version called The Gentleman Caller whilst under contract at Metro-GoldwynMayer which was never made. The main difference between the eventual play and these earlier versions
lies in the character of Laura. She is a stronger, more talkative person, much like Williams’ sister in real
life. The effect of her endless chatter in these versions however is the character can be seen as slightly
simple. It seems Williams realised that this was a less sympathetic, if more realistic, portrayal and by
making Laura a shyer, more mysterious, character the power of the play intensified.
In a 1975 interview Williams claimed there was “very little” autobiography in his plays, “except that they
reflect somehow the particular psychological turmoil I was going through when I wrote them”. Whilst the
latter statement might be also be true, anyone who studies a little of Williams’ life can instantly see that
the former claim is false. The list of similarities between the author’s life and the play is endless and goes
beyond the parallels between the character of Laura and his sister Rose. The role of Amanda is clearly
based on his own mother. His younger brother, Dakin, later claimed that Tennessee lifted whole segments
of his mother’s everyday speech including the morning cry of: ‘Rise and shine!’ and her opening
monologue on mastication. He gave the royalties from the play to his mother for ‘borrowing’ her
characteristics. It is said that when Laurette Taylor met Edwina Williams on the opening night of the
play the actress asked what it was like to see herself portrayed on stage. The character of Tom
(Tennessee’s birth name) clearly represents the author with his job in the factory who dreams of being a
writer. The city and apartment are identical to that which the Williams family lived in. Even small details
are borrowed from real life such as the name of the children’s high school (Soldan) and the name of
Jim’s former fiancée (Meisenbach, who Jim nicknames ‘Kraut-head’, which Williams mischievously
borrowed from the name of a rival male student at school).
Whilst most people agree from clues in the text that the events in The Glass Menagerie span roughly six
months from winter to spring, the exact date of the events depicted is a little confusing. The Williams
family relocated to St. Louis in the state of Missouri in 1918 and moved into the cramped apartment
represented in the play in 1925. Tennessee started employment at the International Shoe Company
factory (like the character of Tom) in 1931 and remained there until 1935 when the family’s financial
situation improved, allowing him to return to education. This would date the play, if viewed as
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autobiographical, to around the early to mid 1930s. However, this is contradicted by several historical
and cultural references in the script. Tom mentions the Spanish Civil War which took place between
1936 and 1939 and specifically the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica in April 1937. In scene 5
Tom is reading a newspaper with the headline “Franco Triumphs!” referring to the Spanish leader
General Franco, and he later alludes to Neville Chamberlain’s [British Prime Minister between 1937 and
1940] visit to Berchtesgaden, Germany where he signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler. Both these
events date this scene to late 1938. This is supported by Jim’s reply to Amanda when asked if he can
manage to carry the candelabra and glass of wine simultaneously: “Sure, I’m Superman.” The character
first appeared in Action Comics in July 1938. However, Jim also tells Laura that he went to the Chicago
World’s Fair “the summer before last” when actually this exposition took place between 1933-1934.
Whilst academics endlessly debate these idiosyncrasies in the text, it rarely troubles audiences when
watching the play in production.
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6. THE GREAT DEPRESSION
The socio-political backdrop of The Glass Menagerie, as with the vast majority of art created during the
1930s, was the Great Depression. The Williams family, like the Wingfield family in the play, were greatly
affected by the economic downtown and were forced to move to a cramped apartment in a run-down
tenement block. Tennessee, like the character of Tom, was forced to work in a factory packing boxes. It
is the decline in the family’s fortunes and their subsequent concerns about money that creates the tension
which forms the dramatic centre of the play and is the catalyst for the climatic events which unfold.
The Great Depression originated in America but rapidly spread abroad and the term is now used to refer
to the worldwide financial crisis. It began with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. Spending had
accelerated during the 1920s as more people bought their own homes and invested in the stock market.
Banks and investors were badly regulated and allowed over-optimistic loans; this level of consumer debt
was unsustainable and, as people failed to keep up repayments, panic grew and the market crashed. On
‘Black Thursday’ (24th October), leading bankers met to try and take control of the situation by buying a
large amount of shares with the intention of boosting confidence in the market, however this only
provided temporary respite over the weekend and ‘Black Monday’ (28 October) led to more investors
trying hastily to sell their shares causing a further plunge. Sensational press stories such as bankers
throwing themselves off skyscrapers further panicked the public and several bank runs (where banks have
to close their doors to stop the public withdrawing all their savings, rendering the bank moneyless)
occurred. The panic in America had a knock-on effect around the world where the epic costs of World
War I prevented already strained countries from being able to respond effectively to the crisis.
The 1930s became a decade of unemployment and those with jobs struggled to make ends meet. Herbert
Hoover [1874-1964] had been inaugurated at President of the USA six months earlier and his response
to the economic situation was heavily criticised. Hoover was reluctant to increase national debt by
borrowing money to invest in rejuvenating the economy. He also believed that setting up a benefit system
to assist citizens who were on a low income or unemployed would lead to an unmotivated society where
individuals would become lazy and not try to gain work. Instead he appealed to business owners to resist
making their workers redundant or reducing wages. Hoover strongly argued that a policy of volunteerism
was the only way for America to climb her way out of the recession, through the American values of self-
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determinism and pride. The American people disagreed and as unemployment levels reached an all-time
high of 25% in the winter of 1932, they voted in President Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945].
Two men looking for work during the Great Depression
The economic situation Roosevelt faced was the most extreme in US history. Two million citizens were
homeless, (many living in shanty towns nicknamed ‘Hoovervilles’ after the unpopular former leader),
production had fallen to 50% of its pre-crash level, and farmers were experiencing price drops of up to
60% for their goods. To make matters worse, the dire financial situation had led to a dramatic increase in
crime. On the 4th of March, Roosevelt’s inauguration day, the country was in the midst of bank panic as
32 states closed their banks as customers had withdrawn so much money they were virtually run dry. The
new President’s solution was very different from that of his predecessor. He stated a policy of ‘relief,
recovery and reform’ recognising that the economy would only recover when the public felt confident
enough to begin spending again. He used his inauguration speech to deliver the famous phrase: “The only
thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Relief was provided to the public through the Federal Emergency
Relief Administration. Its initiatives included New Deal programmes which created work in governmentled projects such as road-building and creating national parks, and the Federal Trade Commission which
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gave mortgage relief to homeowners. Reform was brought to the financial sector, bringing in new codes
of practice with the aim of preventing future over-speculation, (Roosevelt was blunt in his condemning of
the capitalist greed which caused the original crash). Finally, recovery was initiated by major
government spending via the Public Works Administration in industrial enterprises. Simultaneously,
Roosevelt determined to make spending cuts in areas such as education, research and the military.
By 1936 it seemed Roosevelt’s policies were working as the economy recovered rapidly (with the
exception of unemployment which remained high) and almost regained its pre-1929 levels. In 1937 he
was voted in for a second term of presidency. However that year a second recession unexpectedly hit as
the Federal Reserve doubled the amount of money which was required to be held in reserve and this
sudden contraction led to a drop in the money supply. Production and profits again dropped and
unemployment rose even higher. This situation was to last throughout 1938. Recovery was given a
significant boost in 1940 when the defeat of France in World War II meant that European countries had
to look to America to buy their war supplies. In 1941 America joined the war, and by 1945 17 million
had entered military service, dramatically reducing the unemployment levels. Roosevelt’s New Deal
programmes have divided economists over whether they prolonged or shortened the recession but he
remained popular with the public being voted into a third and then a fourth presidential term. The
extreme pressures of his time as ruler eventually took their toll and he died in March 1945.
The severity of the Great Depression had an impact on all Americans: between 1930 and 1933 nine
million savings accounts were wiped out; one million families lost their farms; and the average family
income dropped by 40%. It is crucial to understand the social context of this period when exploring The
Glass Menagerie to comprehend the pressure that its characters are experiencing and what is motivating
their behaviour.
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7. THE DEEP SOUTH
Amanda in The Glass Menagerie constantly refers to her youth spent in the south. She frequently
mentions the manners and warmth of the inhabitants of the Mississippi Delta, the sons of plantation
owners who courted her there and the parties and social gatherings she enjoyed. The prosperous south has
long been a feature of many American plays, novels and films, most famously in Gone With the Wind. The
heroine of that novel and subsequent film, Scarlett O’Hara, is the archetype of the kind of southern belle2
which Amanda imagines herself to be. This is a character type which Williams explored in many of his
plays and was based on his mother, Edwina.
The Deep South is made up of a series of states, usually including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi and South Carolina. They are differentiated from the artificial Upper South as they have
historically relied on agriculture produced on plantations (a large area of land), particularly cotton. The
Deep South is often referred to as the Old South and this is because the term usually refers to the culture
and values of these states in their pre-Civil War conditions, rather than a specific geographic area. This
period is termed Ante-Bellum (literally ‘before the war’). As the Native Americans gradually retreated
east across America away from the European settlers’ expansion, thousands of men headed to the
southern lands to create settlements as the soil was perfect for farming. The Delta, land at the mouth of a
river region of Mississippi, was particularly fertile and by the 1830s the area was a leading cotton
producer. The high price of cotton on the international market made the fortunes of these men who used
cheap labour and slaves to keep their costs down. By 1860, there were 437,000 black slaves in the
region and Mississippi was producing one million bales of cotton per year; it was one of the richest states
in America. The plantation owners lived in expansive plantation mansions of neoclassical design (such as
that owned by Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof); many of these beautiful examples of Ante-Bellum
architecture still exist. Amanda Wingfield constantly reminisces about the social functions and culture
these ‘Cotton Kings’ enjoyed.
The Deep South way of life was threatened in 1861 when Civil War broke out between the Northern
states (who wanted to end slavery) and the Southern States (who did not and instead wanted to make
their own policies). The southerners demanded independence from the Union and the war waged for four
years. 80,000 Mississippians joined the Confederate (Southern) Army but the Northerners won the
2
Originating from the French word for ‘beautiful’.
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battle. There were an estimated 620,000 fatalities, the highest number of Americans killed in any war.
Afterwards began the period known as Reconstruction, the reintegration of the Southern states into the
Union, and the Ante-Bellum way of life in the Deep South began to change. The Emancipation Act of
1863 freed all black slaves and although the change was not immediately enforced, the law did gradually
liberate African-American slaves and white plantation owners began to lose their power and riches.
Despite the changes to their existence, many of these rich families attempted to cling to their former
cultural way of life for decades to come.
Tennessee Williams once said: “Home is where you hang your childhood.” When he was three years-old,
the Williams family moved to Clarksdale where his maternal grandfather, Walter Dakin, became the
rector of the local church. Clarksdale was called the ‘Golden Buckle of the Cotton Belt’, a prosperous
town which still tried to cling to values of the Old South. Williams’ great-uncle, a politician named John
Sharp Williams, was a plantation owner there and Tennessee liked to quote his departing comment to the
US senate: “I’d rather be a hound dog and bay at the moon from my Mississippi plantation than remain
in the United States Senate.” As a child, Williams was taken to glamorous parties at the mansion of the
daughter of the town’s founder. Many contemporaries reported that Edwina Williams chose to speak in a
gentile southern accent throughout her life, even though she was born in the mid-west and lived most of
her life in St. Louis. It is this pretension which Williams captures in the character of Amanda who, like
Edwina, was not born before the Civil War and is therefore romanticising about a culture she never
actually experienced. He further illustrates this by showing the character trying to sell romantic fiction
on the telephone and even alluding in one speech to Gone with the Wind.
Clearly the characters, stories and locations of his time in Clarksdale had a big impact on the young
Williams. These experiences provided him with a wealth of material and the Deep South frequently
reoccurs in his plays. As the patriarchal Big Daddy says in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Delta is “the richest
land this side of the Valley Nile”; it certainly proved so to Tennessee.
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8. THE AMERICAN PLAY
British and American theatre in the early 20th century was very alike. Early musicals featured an array of
songs that were loosely bound by an unbelievable, sometimes indiscernible, plotline. Plays were either
melodramatic and hackneyed or social comedies. Britain continued to favour drawing-room dramas by
playwrights such as Terence Rattigan [1911-1977] and the high society comedies of Noel Coward [18991973] until the challenging and experimental political plays of the Royal Court broke through in the
1950s and 1960s , represented by John Osborne’s [1929-1994] kitchen-sink drama Look Back in Anger
(1956). America however was ahead of Britain as new writers such as Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and
Tennessee Williams emerged during the 1930s and 1940s with plays that challenged their audiences by
dealing with real life through innovative forms.
Eugene O’Neill was born in 1888. Although he was closer in age to Tennessee Williams and Arthur
Millers’ parents than the writers themselves, he did not become successful until his thirties. His
experiments in theatre were also years ahead of their time and he cut a path through the theatrical
landscape which allowed others to follow. His father was an actor (Eugene was born in a hotel room on
Broadway), and he spent his youth touring the country whilst his father acted in regional theatres. These
experiences taught him the mechanics of theatre by watching the same productions hundreds of times
from both a backstage and audience perspective, but more importantly he learnt the need to view theatre
as an art form and, that for those involved, the importance of fulfilling one’s artistic potential. O’Neill’s
father failed to do so, Eugene recognised that he could have been a great actor but was stuck playing the
same badly written roles in crowd-pleasing plays for years at a time- he played the lead in an
unimaginative adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo3 4,000 times. O’Neill’s early life gave him plenty
of material to draw upon in his later plays. He knew his mother had not wanted another child and she
became a morphine addict after first taking it during his birth. He seemed bent on self-destruction and as
teenager drank heavily and visited brothels. He was expelled from Princeton University, and then fled on
a gold-mining trip to Central America immediately after marrying a girl he barely knew when she
became pregnant. He returned for a couple of months after contracting malaria, but avoided his new
family (he did not actually meet his son until he was 12) and soon left on another boat, this time to
Argentina, staying several months. He returned and moved into a room above a hovel of a bar in New
3
A novel written by Alexandre Dumas in 1844.
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York. He divorced his wife, attempted suicide, moved into a sanatorium after developing tuberculosis,
and finally began writing plays.
Eugene O’Neill
Learning his craft by writing for a small theatre collective, O’Neill’s career was boosted by the
appearance on Broadway of his play Beyond the Horizon in 1920. He went on to write some of the most
intense plays of the 20th century, most famously Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), The Iceman Cometh
(1946), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947) and Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956). The latter,
viewed by many as his masterpiece, did not appear until after his death. O’Neill wrote it in 1942 but
locked it in a safe with express instructions not to publish it until at least 25 years after his death and
dictating that it should never be performed. His wife, Carlotta Monterey, ignored his wishes and it
premiered on Broadway three years after his death. It won the playwright a posthumous Pulitzer Prize to
add to the two he had already- he had also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. Long Day’s
Journey into Night explores a dysfunctional family home where the three men are alcoholics and the
mother is addicted to morphine. British theatre director Richard Eyre described it as “The saddest play
ever written”. O’Neill’s plays are relentlessly morbid. His characters always exist at the lowest point of
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human existence, often penniless, suicidal, excluded from society and alone. O’Neill’s early experiences
watching his father’s repertory had taught him a distain for the neatness of structure, stiff dialogue and
unrealistic characters which predominated in theatre at the time. He became the first American
dramatist to use vernacular speech and depict real people on the fringes of civilisation. He also
experimented with form, playing with the theatrical language of European expressionist playwrights such
as the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen [1829-1906] and Swedish August Strindberg [1849-1912], incorporating
heightened lighting, sound, music and set design, even masks. The gloomy atmosphere and the endurance
of the characters absorb the audience who get caught up in the cycle of despair. Watching an O’Neill one
is aware of just how painfully honest and real the work is. O’Neill’s later adult life was no less painful
than his earlier experiences, both his sons committed suicide (one was a heroin addict, the other an
alcoholic), he then developed a severe tremor which made it impossible to write and discovered that he
could not create via dictation. He died in a Boston hotel room in 1953, his last words being: “I knew it. I
knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room.” O’Neill was the first American
playwright to try and represent his view of life as truthfully as he could and he set a benchmark for those
that followed.
In 1915, just as O’Neill was starting to write his first adult plays, Arthur Miller was born. Whilst O’Neill
was to become the father of American theatre in the 20th century, it was Miller who would eventually vie
with Williams for the title of greatest American playwright. Born into a prosperous New York family,
Miller’s parents were Polish immigrants who had made their money in retail. They lived in Manhattan,
owned a summer house and had a chauffeur. In 1929, the family lost everything in the Wall Street Crash
and were forced to move to Brooklyn. The teenage Miller had to take on a delivery job before school each
morning to help make ends meet. Miller saved up to study journalism at university but realised theatre
was his first love and switched to studying English literature. He began writing plays for the theatre and
radio and in 1940 The Man Who Had All the Luck opened to disastrous reviews, closing four days later.
His next play, All My Sons (1946), won him great accolades, a run on Broadway and a Tony Award for
Best Author. However it was his next play, Death of a Salesman, which many believe to be the play of the
century. First directed by Williams’ long-term collaborator, Eliz Kazan, the central character, Willy
Loman, is a failed salesman who still tries to convince himself and his family that success is just around
the corner. The play takes place over the last twenty-four hours of Loman’s life before he commits
suicide, no longer able to cope with his lack of fulfilment and realising he is worth more dead than alive.
Whilst exploring the major themes of unfulfilled ambition and ultimately the failure of the American
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Dream, Miller created an intimate family drama; Willy represents the everyman. Like O’Neill and
Williams, Miller experiments with form in the play, allowing scenes from Loman’s real and imagined
history to take place alongside the present. Whilst writing the play Miller had watched Williams’ A
Streetcar Named Desire and was inspired to explore a language which blended the everyday with the
poetic: “It [Streetcar] formed a bridge... to the whole tradition of unashamed word-joy that... we had
turned our backs on.”
Arthur Miller
Miller continued to write about unrealised dreams and the desire for man to find his place in American
society, most notably in A View from the Bridge (1955), The Price (1968) and Broken Glass (1994), but
it was The Crucible in 1953 which equalled Death of Salesman in forcing Americans to confront what
values their country stood for. In 1952 Kazan, along with many other Hollywood directors, writers and
actors, was called to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) who were
investigating pro-Communist activity in the film industry. Kazan, scared of being blacklisted from
working in the industry, traded the name of eight artists who had been members of the Communist party
with the committee. Miller, disgusted at Kazan’s betrayal of trust, did not speak to the director for a
decade. The Crucible explored the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and draw parallels
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between the trials and the blackmail activities of the HUAC. He experimented with language again in the
play, creating a hybrid of the biblical hyperbole of the seventeenth century and theatrical poetry. Miller’s
central character, John Proctor, refuses to name his neighbours as participating in witchcraft in order to
save his own life. He knows the court will tell the town of his testimony and cannot face the debasing of
his reputation. This fundamental American right to chose one’s own destiny is central to all Miller’s work,
Proctor says: “How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” This
central premise in The Crucible connects with audiences worldwide and the play remains his most
performed work. Miller continued to write and remained in the public eye throughout his life, particularly
with his short-lived marriage to Marilyn Monroe [1926-1962] between 1956 and 1961. When he died in
2005, Broadway theatres darkened their lights as a sign of respect.
Williams, O’Neill and Miller were all a product of their time. The impact of the Great Depression in the
1930s marked their lives and was a backdrop to their most celebrated work. The failure of the American
Dream runs throughout the plays. Yet it was the socio-political situation which gave all three dramatists
an opportunity to learn their craft as they were assisted in their early careers by the government run
Federal Theatre Project, an agency established as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal programme to provide
work for the unemployed masses during the recession (see Chapter 6). At its peak, the project employed
over 10,000 artists and played to millions of people throughout the country. Eighty years later, critics of
cuts in government funding on both sides of the Atlantic still use these playwrights as examples of how
state subsidy can help create great art.
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9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams edited by Matthew Roudane (CUP: 1997)
Changing Stages: A View of British Theatre in the Twentieth Century by Richard Eyre and Nicholas
Wright (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC: 2000)
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (Methuen: 2000)
The Great Depression: America in the 1930s by T. H. Watkins (Back Bay: 2010)
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill (Nick Hern: 1994)
Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (Nick Hern: 1991)
Miller Plays 1 by Arthur Miller (Methuen: 2009)
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre by John Russell Brown (OUP: 1995)
Internet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Menagerie
http://arts-archive.com/index.php?pg=12&action=work&genre=P&gname=Play&wid=S3419
http://theater.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/theater/reviews/23glas.html
http://www.cix.co.uk/~shutters/reviews/95055.html
http://theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?id=1077011428971&html_title=&tols_title=&byli
ne=&fid=NONE
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depresson_in_the_United_States
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams-interview75.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/06/american-literature-great-novelists
http://www.southernliterarytrail.org/clarksdale.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tennessee_Williams
http://blog.nola.com/davidcuthbert/2008/05/theater_guy_remembering_dakin.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-rose-williams-1362925.html
http://newliteraryhistory.com/tennesseewilliams.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_period
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7L8EIdFmj4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur3XB80FE3k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN3icAgw9LI&feature=related
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