mother didn’t coddle, and Amanda
doesn’t coddle her children.”
There are other parallels, she says.
“In understanding Amanda, I looked
at my mother and how hard she
worked to make ends meet while trying
to find jobs that allowed her flexibility
to bring up us kids. She had loads of
different jobs. She worked at Starbucks
and then in a gym. She was a tele-
marketer, you name it, and then she
trained as a masseuse. Money was
tight. We only shopped on clearance,
no brands. But that was normal, I never
felt I was deprived.”
The Glass Menagerie is a drama about
family and memory. It is also an ensem-
ble piece, rather than a star vehicle.
Adams insisted I interview the rest of
the team. The director Jeremy Herrin
(Wolf Hall, People, Places and Things
and This House) explained how he had
written to her on spec a few months
ago to see “if she fancied a summer in
London on the stage”. He says Adams
said “yes” because he promised her it
wouldn’t be “a boring, conventional
revival”.
He had a hunch she would accept
because she’s an actress who likes to
take risks. “Artistically Amy is very
interesting, very strategic about doing
roles she hasn’t done before and trying
new things. She is not frightened of
being grotesque and she’s very emo-
tionally authentic. You can see this is
an actress who is not in it for the glam-
our. She is insanely committed to being
as good as she can be in every role.”
The story is narrated by Amanda’s
son, Tom, as he looks back to the 1930s
when he was an aspiring poet forced to
take a tiresome warehouse job. The
role is usually played by one actor, but
in Herrin’s innovative staging there are
two Toms — played by 52-year-old Paul
Hilton (Slow Horses, A Very British Scan-
dal) and 27-year-old Tom Glynn-Carney
(Dunkirk, Tolkien). “I’d never seen that
tension between one’s younger self and
one’s older self properly explored on
stage,” Herrin says.
For this production Herrin has imag-
ined the older Tom as an artist living
in a New York warehouse in 1968. Wil-
liams never wanted the play to be natu-
ralistic, so Herrin has taken that as acue to use lots of screens with visuals
and music throughout.
Adams’s co-stars (whom she is keen
to praise at every opportunity) describe
her as an actress with no airs and
graces and a great sense of humour.
The youngest member of the cast, Vic-
tor Alli, who plays the gentleman caller
Jim O’Connor, left drama school in- “Because of the pandemic, this is
the first production I’ve been in since
performing [the musical] Into the
Woods as a student. I told Amy, so we
keep bursting into song in our breaks,
doing weird duets together.” Hilton
says that observing Adams in rehearsal
is like “watching a flower slowly open.
She doesn’t need to put herself on the
line like this, but she wants... connec-
tion with other human beings.”
We finish our conversation where
we started, with Adams’s daughter. She
celebrated her 12th birthday in London
with a visit to the zoo. “It was raining,
but it was wonderful. In Los Angeles
nobody goes to the zoo when it’s rain-
ing, but we liked seeing how all the dif-
ferent animals reacted to the rain. I
loved the huddled lemurs. I could talk
about that for ever.”
I ask how long it will be before she
will see her daughter again, then imme-
diately regret the question because her
eyes fill with tears. She’ll be back in a
month when she has finished school
and Adams has got through opening
night. She tells me proudly how her
daughter has been reading lines with
her and can do a great Southern accent.
“Yesterday we were talking about
something that was worrying her and
she was searching for words. She sud-
denly burst into Tennessee Williams
and said: ‘I’m just bewildered by life.’ I
totally understand what she means.” c
The Glass Menagerie is at the Duke of
York’s Theatre, London W1, until Aug 27My mother was fierce.
I was a very scared child
and she encouraged me
SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON/CPi SYNDICATION. SMALL PICTURES ABOVE: ALAMY, AP, DISNEY, COLUMBIA PICTURES4
Catch Me If You
Can (2002)
Yes, she is
overshadowed
by DiCaprio and
Hanks, but Adams
is stellar as the
naive fiancée of
a conman. It’s
a wonderful
glimpse of a
burgeoning
talent. Buy
on Amazon2
The Master (2012)
Adams delivers a
chilling performance
in Paul Thomas
Anderson’s
masterpiece. Her
menacing presence
as the wife of Philip
Seymour
Hoffman’s
cult leader
propels
the film.
Netflix1
American Hustle
(2013)
For this screwball
comedy, Adams
stars as a
con artist
masquerading
as an English
aristocrat. Her
raw, brilliant
turn earned
her only
leading actress
Oscar nomination.
Buy on Amazon3
Arrival (2016)
In this thought-
provoking alien
invasion film,
Adams’s linguistics
professor is
by turns
hauntingly
sad and
wonderfully
witty.
Buy on
Amazon29 May 2022 7