Tennessee Williams doesn’t believe in suspending our disbelief. In the opening prologue of his great American classic, The Glass Menagerie, the playwright speaks directly to the audience via the character of Tom Wingfield, to make sure we understand the artifice spread before us. “I am the opposite of a stage magician,” he explains. “He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

This opening statement has clearly informed director Eamon Flack’s creative M.O., guiding a masterful realisation of Williams’ “memory play” that lays bare the mechanics of this production’s theatrical magic tricks. We see the edges of the set, the crowded lighting rigs, the network of power cables and tripods that crisscross about the stage; this is not real life, but a warped reflection aping reality.

The irony of this conceit is that The Glass Menagerie is largely autobiographical. Like his protagonist, Tom Wingfield, Williams was a desperate and frustrated captive of a family from which he felt intellectually detached and yet emotionally bound to. Like Wingfield, Williams escaped this life only to be haunted by the consequences of his self-preservation. At this play’s nucleus is a...