Tickets available now for shows running through Sunday, March 29.

The Abreact Performance Space is hosting a performance of Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie,” presented by Puzzle Piece Theatre. The play, which first premiered onstage in 1944, eventually launching Williams to great success, is a “memory play” dealing with characters drawn from Williams’ real-life family history.

D.B. Schroeder as Tom. Photo courtesy of Puzzle Piece Theatre

The action is framed by narration through Williams’ surrogate, Tom Wingfield, son and younger brother of the family, portrayed by Puzzle Piece Producing Artistic Director D.B. Schroeder. Schroeder smokes innumerable cigarettes in his portrayal of Tom, torn between the duty that binds him to his histrionic mother and emotionally fragile older sister, and the desire to seek adventure—a siren song that the father of the family followed, abandoning the mother, Amanda, to raise their children alone.

Laura Heikkinen and Connie Cowper. Photo courtesy of Puzzle Piece Theatre

Amanda is the lynchpin of the play, and is the first in a grand tradition of Williams’ somewhat dismissive characterization of females—manipulative, violently emotional, lost in reminiscence over her past popularity, and vacillating wildly between denial of her present condition and panic at the family’s shrinking prospects. Actress Connie Cowper effectively renders this character sketch, invoking powerful, cringing discomfort that is a natural response to Amanda’s overbearing nature and delusional machinations.

Laura Heikkinen as Laura. Photo courtesy of Puzzle Piece Theatre

In fact, so strong a character is Amanda that it takes until the second act for her daughter, Laura (portrayed by Laura Heikkinen), to emerge from her shadow. Laura, a deeply introverted girl with a slight physical deformity that contributes to her massive inferiority complex, finds her sole joy in a collection of glass creatures, the eponymous menagerie. Quietly, she nourishes a longstanding obsession with Jim, an old high school acquaintance who conveniently appears in the second act as the much yearned for “gentleman caller” that represents the family’s chance to lift Laura out of the sure perils of spinsterhood. The scene between Laura and Jim (portrayed by Zach Hendrickson) is the most moving of the performance, and gives both actors a spotlight to shine, lifting our hopes for Laura before—in true Williams fashion—they are extinguished, literally and figuratively.

Zach Hendrickson as Jim, Laura’s gentleman caller. Photo courtesy of Puzzle Piece Theatre

Overall, a tight performance, doing a lot with a little. While “The Glass Menagerie” maintains some outmoded language and concepts less relevant considering the options afforded to modern women, the play’s examination of the fate of those left behind carries some resonance in a city whose hopes have been raised and dashed a hundred times since the play’s original debut.

“The Glass Menagerie” will run this weekend and next, with performances from March 20-22 and March 27-29, at the Abreact Theatre Collective, 1301 W. Lafayette, suite 113, Detroit; 313-454-1542; www.theabreact.com. For more information on the production, visit Puzzle Piece Theatre online at www.puzzlestage.org.