Tennessee Williams is best known for two plays that were both made into iconic films: A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof . Both bring an intoxicating blend of heat, liquor, pent up sexuality and claustrophobic family tensions to the stage - with death and madness lurking in the wings.

This early play by Williams, The Glass Menagerie , shares much of this atmosphere, but is a less intense affair. It is a more subdued, elegiac tale, depicting youthful frustrations and evoking life's bittersweet sadness.

Set in 1930's America, against the backdrop of depression, it tells the story of Paul and Laura, a brother and sister in their twenties, who live in an small apartment with their nagging, disappointed but loving mother, Amanda. Their father took off many years ago, and Amanda finds comfort in memories of her genteel upbringing in the Deep South - much as Blanche DuBois does in Streetcar .

Tom is a poet and a dreamer, shackled by his menial employment in a warehouse and irritated by his mother. He spends his nights at the movies, where he can indulge his longing for adventure.

Shy, inhibited Laura lives an aimless and lonely life, much of it spent in her imagination. Her mother realises that her only hope is for a "gentleman caller" - a man who will marry and keep her. One day, Tom brings such a caller home for dinner. The resulting encounter is the focus of the second half of the play - a touching, sad, but perhaps also hopeful denouement.

This moving, lyrical play is done justice by a superb production, with four top-notch performances bringing the characters to life. We end up feeling great sympathy for each of them, especially Jenny Pick's Laura, whose precious "menagerie" of glass animals symbolises her strange and delicate nature.

The opening night played to a full house, and deserved such a large audience. If you can get hold of a ticket, don't miss this fine dramatic treat.