When and where does The Glass Menagerie take place? As trivia questions go, that would seem to be an easy one: the squalid, Depression-era St. Louis apartment of Amanda Wingfield and her two grown children, restless aspiring writer Tom and emotionally stunted Laura.
But that's in fact wrong. It actually takes place inside Tom's head, as he recalls — perhaps accurately, perhaps not — the evening that forever changed his life and that of his sister and mother.
Tennessee Williams's semi-autobiographical drama is widely considered one of the greatest American plays and remains one of the most widely produced. (PCPA staged it earlier this year.) But even if you're familiar with the material, it's easy to forget the fact that it is — as Tom explicitly states — a "memory play."