THERE are always huge elements of emotional fragility exposed in a Tennessee Williams play with the characters engulfed in a combination of hysteria and melancholy mashed into forlorn despair.

For all that, the storylines and dialogue are peppered with caustic wit and withering one-liners that can summons up chuckles and even guffaws from an audience.

The Glass Menagerie was his first big hit, if you'll pardon such a coarse term, and it is overflowing with the sheer wretchedness of unfulfilled and disappointed lives that yet have expectations beyond the reality.

Wirral Globe:

Great Scaachi as Amanda and Erin Doherty as Laura. Picture: Tristram Kenton

In this absorbing production, director Ellen McDougall nails most triumphantly the distraught anguish that fuels the agitated antics of the 'damaged' Wingfield family who eke out their disillusioned lives in the Mississippi Delta region of the US.

The mother Amanda, an overwrought 'southern belle' who has been abandoned by her husband, is the ardent anvil upon which are hammered out the fractious bonds that link families.

Greta Scacchi is quite simply fabulous in the role.

Wirral Globe:

Eric Kofi Abrefa as Jim and Erin Doherty as Laura. Picture: Tristram Kenton

She swoops, she swoons and she simpers in what is close to a ‘tour de force’ capturing the very essence of giddy desperation that fills Amanda’s daily existence. And her drawling ‘way below the Mason Line’ accent is spot on.

Amanda’s constantly irked and disconsolate son Tom is played by Tom Mothersdale with conviction and passion although he has adopted something more like a New Jersey-Hoboken accent rather than the elongated vowels of the south.

Nevertheless as narrator and performer he too gets the soul of the play, as does Erin Doherty in the role of Tom's sister Laura.

Wirral Globe:

Greta Scaachi as Amanda. Picture: Tristram Kenton

She is 'damaged' both physically and emotionally and is the object of Amanda's concern and ire, agonizing and yet angry at the lack of 'gentlemen callers' to woo and win Laura and whisk her away to an imagined contentment.

Then in steps Tom's workmate Jim, from the warehouse where he is obliged to earn the 'family corn'.

Tom has invited him to dinner and Amanda is blissful at the prospect of what she envisages as the salvation for Laura whose sole preoccupation is collecting model glass animals, tagged the ‘menagerie’ by her mother.

Wirral Globe:

Erin Doherty as Laura. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Of course in the world of Tennessee Williams there is never an easy resolution and whilst Jim pays courtesy to Laura, even embracing her, the revelation that he is engaged to be married results in the literal and symbolic shattering of her most prized glass sculpture.

Eric Kofi Abrefa plays Jim, a man of ambition and intent, with enthusiasm allowing his character to display sympathy with a clear grasp of the dejected hollowness that swamps this family, and particularly Laura and her mother.Wirral Globe:

Tom Mothersdale as Tom. Picture: Tristram Kenton

It is an engrossing interpretation of the play and the sudden downpour of rain - and yes, real water - that deluges the stage and performers at the finale is a cracking metaphor.

The show's run ends on Saturday, October 31.

Tickets are from everymanplayhouse.com or 0151 709 4776.