Glasshouses

Synopsis

Nottingham, 1960s

The play follows two families, the Coopers and the Ashtons, over twenty-one months starting from August 1963. In the Cooper family, Jim, a seventeen-year-old boy, is frustrated and resentful as he watches his beloved mother, Dora, sacrifice herself for his father, Arthur, whom Jim considers intellectually and morally inferior. Meanwhile, in the Ashton family, Elsie, a ruthless woman, has completely emasculated her husband, Frank.

The play has extraordinary moments of pathos and poetry, as well as its acute, bracing, and funny depiction of growing up and the search for human dignity in a world filled with lies, evasions, and hypocrisies.