In the fall of 2019, at Wild Project in downtown Manhattan, Ruth Stage became only the second company ever to present The Glass Menagerie Off-Broadway. Austin Pendleton returned to direct alongside co-director Peter Bloch, who led a daring reimagining of Tennessee Williams’s breakthrough work. Narrated by Tom Wingfield, the play follows a restless young man haunted by the fragile mother and sister he left behind in a suffocating St. Louis apartment, as memory and regret blur into something inescapable.

This production plunged audiences into Tom’s fractured recollections, with Matt de Rogatis embodying the role. Shadow-drenched lighting and furniture partially constructed of glass served as a stark metaphor for the fragility and danger within the Wingfield home. Also featuring Spencer Scott, Alexandra Rose and Ginger Grace as Amanda Wingfield, whose performance TheaterMania likened to that of a master chef, The Glass Menagerie quickly became a downtown theatrical event. Critics praised the cast’s eerie intensity, with Drama Desk voters, Outer Critics Circle members and The New Yorker commending our haunting, psychologically charged interpretation of the American classic, solidifying Ruth Stage's signature approach to reexamining canonical works through a bold and unsettling lens.