Menagerie was Williams’ initial popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our preeminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, using the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, which is examined and performed in classrooms and theaters all over the world. A new intro by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor from the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, reappraises the play over fifty percent a century after it gained the New York Dilemma Critics Circle Prize: ‘More than fifty years after telling his story of a family group whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams’s mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally.’ This release of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams’ essay over the effect of sudden popularity on a struggling writer, ‘The Catastrophe of Success’, as well as a short section of Williams’ very own ‘Production Records’.