Paul Hilton ( The Inheritance) is the older, unreliable narrator, Tom Glynn-Carney ( The Ferryman) the young firebrand. Director Herrin, who staged a fine production of All My Sons at the Old Vic in 2019 featuring a fabulously volatile performance from another Hollywood royal, Sally Field, tackles this element with a seemingly obvious but seldom used device: having two actors play Tom. The depth of the play comes less from the scenario than the telling of it, through the memory, or invention - “truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion” - of the older Tom. Video Saved the Theater Star: How a Digital Capture Boom Is Bolstering Pandemic-Era Broadway Why the PBS Doc 'Keeping Company With Sondheim' Is a 'Detective Story' Instead of a 'Museum Piece' Hugh Jackman, Daniel Craig, Sarah Jessica Parker Take Top Wins in 2022 Audience Choice Awards (Exclusive) On the plus side, the low wattage of the tentpole star turns the evening into a more pronounced ensemble affair that is always gently engaging, and through which one actor does wring a briefly shattering degree of pathos. Whether this is a symptom or the cause of a slightly underwhelming production is difficult to judge by all accounts the play is a delicate thing that often eludes the best of them. And yet, while offering a perfectly charming performance in Jeremy Herrin’s West End revival, she surprisingly fails to find any edge to it. It might seem that the character was tailor-made for the formidable, multiple Oscar-nominated Adams, who is so often adept in the fertile zone between folly, frailty and darkness.

Amy Adams makes a rare stage appearance, and her first in London, as Amanda Wingfield, the domineering, showboating, delusional matriarch of Tennessee Williams’ semi-autobiographical memory play, The Glass Menagerie.

Amy adams in the glass menagerie