The Glass Menagerie at Glen Eden Playhouse

In the absence of a repertory company, Auckland's undervalued community theatres have become de facto guardians of neglected classics.

The value of this role is exemplified by a fine production of The Glass Menagerie at the Glen Eden Playhouse.

The 1944 play is regarded as Tennessee Williams' most autobiographical work and it offers an emotional delicacy missing from his better-known works.

The play's ruthless dissection of family relationships is likely to strike a chord with younger audiences, and director Jesse Peach approaches the work with the enthusiasm and clarity of youth. Untroubled by anxieties about making the play relevant, he allows the playgoers to find their own way into the emotional maelstrom of the drama.

The production lacks the sophisticated stagecraft and refined design values of professional theatre, but it delivers an object lesson on how little these things matter when the fundamentals of performance and characterisation are given such sensitive attention.

Tennessee Williams' characters somehow manage to combine wildly incongruous extremes while their inner lives remain as mysterious as those of real people.

This quality is superbly expressed in Annie Whittle's mercurial performance as the play's mad matriarch, Amanda Wingfield. Her exuberant vitality holds together the contradictions of a character who is, by turns, callous and caring, delusional and clearsighted, calculating and naive.

The refusal to accept the sordid realities of her circumstances makes Amanda's struggle seem heroic. But her delusions are destructive and this paradox finds a metaphor in the spun-glass figurines that form the menagerie of the play's title. These exquisite and easily broken creatures provide solace for Laura, the crippled and painfully shy daughter who is played with disarming transparency by Abigail Greenwood.

Glen Pickering successfully takes on the challenging role of Tom - the voice of Tennessee Williams - a poet working in a shoe warehouse. He is torn between an urge to escape from his domineering mother and guilt about abandoning the sister who desperately needs his support.

The excellent performances are rounded off by Ashley Hawke's sensitive portrayal of the gentleman caller. He is the most superficial of characters yet delivers the drama's single, fleeting moment of pure happiness by leading Laura in an awkward waltz.

The play deserves a much larger audience than it is likely to attract. Tennessee Williams is the dramatist of the beautiful failure and his richly poetic vision has fallen out of favour in a cynical age.

But if the glittering ironies of post-modernism are beginning to look tattered, this production offers the bracing alternative of drama based on genuine emotion and a realistic appraisal of the human condition.