Cherry Jones never wanted to play Amanda Wingfield, the bruised and brittle matriarch in The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' semi autobiographical masterpiece that made his name. It was only when former National Theatre of Scotland associate director John Tiffany wooed the veteran stage and screen actress, best known in the UK for her Emmy winning turn as U.S. President Allison Taylor in TV drama, 24, into tackling the part that she discovered there was more to Amanda than meets the eye. “I'd always thought of Amanda as a harridan,” says Jones on a break from re-rehearsing Tiffany's 2013 American Repertory Theatre production for its current Edinburgh International Festival run. “I'd auditioned for Laura about five times in my youth, but I was too big-boned to ever get the part. I'd always seen the play through young people's eyes, but when John Tiffany forced me to sit down with it, I started to realise that here was a woman in desperate straits. “Her
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.