Mark Wilson’s novel version of Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie at the Melbourne Theatre Company doesn’t cooperate with historical readings of the play – but is exactly the kind of theatre we should be championing.

Wilson takes a much-loved classic that recollects family anxieties and subverts it, pushing into its dreamlike strangeness and nudging its audience to interrogate how memories are constructed.

This new version of Menagerie might well mark a defining shift for Melbourne theatre aesthetics, inviting real experimentation back into the main stage conversation.

The Glass Menagerie (1944) explores a haunted family in mid-depression era St Louis. It is Williams’ most autobiographical work.

A mother and her adult son and daughter – whose husband and father has deserted them – share a claustrophobic apartment and emotionally suffocating relationships, inhabiting the stifling space within their own distinct dreams about what their lives should be.

Tom (Tim Draxl in this production), the son, yearns for freedom, adventure, poetry. He disappears every night into dancehalls.

His mother, Amanda (Alison Whyte), is emotionally neglected, holds Tom responsible for their futures, and is desperate for control in a life in which she has almost none.

The daughter, Laura (Millie Donaldson), is disabled, displayed as a deficit; she is habituated to low self-esteem. But Laura’s........

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