在美国的圣路易斯，汤姆·温菲尔德和母亲阿曼达及姐姐劳拉住在无人管理、破旧不堪的公寓里。懦弱的劳拉是个跛子，由于行动不便而没有工作，她喜欢收集一些玻璃做成的小动物摆在家里；母亲平时靠给顾客打电话征订杂志赚点钱，因此生活的重担都压在汤姆的肩上。懂事的汤姆勤奋地工作，他想成为一个作家，但时值经济大萧条时期，日子过得格外的艰难。母亲对劳拉的婚事寄托了很大的希望，但女儿却连男朋友都没有。一天，在汤姆的邀请下，他的同事吉姆到他家吃晚饭。见到吉姆，劳拉大吃了一惊，并表现得十分紧张：原来他们是中学同学，那时吉姆是单纯的劳拉心中的偶像。母亲想撮合吉姆和劳拉，遗憾的是吉姆已有了女朋友，最后，他温柔地向劳拉告别；虽然汤姆热爱着姐姐，但他还是决定离开。他告别了空荡荡的家，但却始终无法忘却姐姐那闪烁着微光的玻璃动物园。

出身贫寒的南部地主身患重病不久于世，他的两个性格相反的儿子布雷克和古柏带着各自的妻子参加他六十五岁的生日聚会。古柏是一位律师并管理大笔产业；弟弟布雷克却因为自己误会老友致使他自杀身亡，并怪其妻与挚友有染，不与其同房，成为大嫂的笑柄并无法接管产业。其实布雷克也不想继承产业，因为他觉得世上一切都很虚伪，但经过贤妻玛姬的激励以及伯父的开导，他才开始了解生活的意义，因而全家最终各得其所。

Blanche DuBois is a fading, but still-attractive, Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others (but most of all, herself) from her reality, and an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male suitors. Blanche arrives at the apartment of her sister Stella Kowalski in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, on Elysian Fields Avenue; the local transportation that she takes to arrive there includes a streetcar route named "Desire." The steamy, urban ambiance is a shock to Blanche's nerves. Stella, who fears the reaction of her husband Stanley, welcomes Blanche with some trepidation. As Blanche explains that their ancestral Southern plantation, Belle Reve in Laurel, Mississippi, has been "lost" due to the "epic fornications" of their ancestors, her veneer of self-possession begins to slip drastically. Blanche tells Stella that her supervisor allowed her to take time off from her job as an English teacher because of her upset nerves, when in fact, she has been fired for having an affair with a 17-year-old student. This turns out not to be the only seduction in which she has engaged, and, along with other problems, has led her to escape Laurel. A brief marriage marred by the discovery that her husband, Allan Grey, was having a homosexual affair and his subsequent suicide has led Blanche to withdraw into a world in which fantasies and illusions blend seamlessly with reality.
In contrast to both the self-effacing and deferential Stella and the pretentious refinement of Blanche, Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski, is a force of nature: primal, rough-hewn, brutish, and sensual. He dominates Stella in every way and is physically and emotionally abusive.[1] Stella tolerates his primal behavior as this is part of what attracted her in the first place; their love and relationship are heavily based on powerful—even animal-like—sexual chemistry, something that Blanche finds impossible to understand.
The arrival of Blanche upsets her sister and brother-in-law's system of mutual dependence. Stella's concern for her sister's well-being emboldens Blanche to hold court in the Kowalski apartment, infuriating Stanley and leading to conflict in his relationship with his wife. Blanche and Stanley are on a collision course, and Stanley's friend and Blanche's would-be suitor, Harold "Mitch" Mitchell,gets trampled in their path. Stanley discovers Blanche's past through a co-worker who travels to Laurel frequently, and he confronts her with the things that she has been trying to put behind her, partly out of concern that her character flaws may be damaging to the lives of those in her new home, just as they were in Laurel, and partly out of a distaste for her pretense in general. However, his attempts to "unmask" her are predictably cruel and violent. In their final confrontation, it is implied that Stanley rapes Blanche, resulting in her nervous breakdown. Stanley has her committed to a mental institution, and in the closing moments, Blanche utters her signature line to the kindly doctor who leads her away: "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
The reference to the streetcar named Desire—providing the aura of New Orleans geography—is symbolic. Blanche not only has to travel on a streetcar route named "Desire" to reach Stella's home on "Elysian Fields" but her desire acts as an irrepressible force throughout the play—she can only hang on as her desires lead her.
The character of Blanche is thought to be based on Williams' sister Rose Williams who struggled with her mental health and became incapacitated after a lobotomy.

故事發生在三十年代美國一個離群獨處的小家庭，內容圍繞四個角色之間的關係變化。　
母親Amanda在年輕時被丈夫拋棄，獨力供養一對子女。為了令兒女不會重複自己的悲劇，因此對他們的生活嚴加管制。　
女兒Laura的一對「長短腳」令她自卑不已，極少與別人交往，但Amanda卻為了女兒嫁得如意郎君，用盡一切方法將女兒塑造成淑女，可惜當她們知道Laura暗戀對象Jim與別的女孩訂婚，兩母女再次墜入失望的深淵……。　
兒子Tom為了反抗母親的壓力，每天迷醉於自己的幻想世界，最後更抵受不住母親而決定離家而去……。　

The Glass Menagerie is Tennessee Williams’ poetic masterpiece, anchored by the ageing southern belle Amanda Wingfield, who hopes for her son Tom to fulfill her dreams of finding the perfect “gentleman caller” for her shy and damaged daughter Laura.

A repressed minister's daughter nurses a longtime unrequited love for the boy next door, who grows up into a playboy whose nature is completely at odds with hers.

In the strange limbo of 1940, on a dilapidated hotel verandah perched high in a rainforest above the west coast of Mexico, a group of lost souls collide - a defrocked priest turned tourist guide, the grieving widow who runs the hotel, a family of jubilant Nazis and an itinerant portrait artist with her 97 year old poet grandfather. The result is an epic battle between flesh and spirit, captivity and freedom, art and faith, heightened by a tropical rain-storm.

The story is very simple. It concerns a family. The conflicts, aggressions and love of a family seated around the kitchen table. A mother, Amanda, who is abandoned, her artistically minded son Tom who has to work in a shoe factory, and her fragile, dreaming daughter Laura Rose who loves glass animal figures – particularly a unicorn. The concerns of these three people begin to centre on a kind of saviour – the gentleman caller – Jim O'Connor. The limited dimensions of their St. Louis apartment seem unable to contain the enormity of each character's hopes, desires and dreams. These hopes, desires and dreams expressed but sometimes written "between the lines" in Tennessee Williams's brilliant dramatic poetry, are the (wordless) inspiration for my choreography. Tennessee Williams calls his autobiographical drama a "memory play": All action and emotion are remembered from Tom/Tennessee's past. In my "memory ballet", drama and biography, past and present exist simultaneously and interact.

"How pretty the sky is! I ought to go there on a rocket that never comes down."
On a street in New Orleans, in the blistering summer heat, a sister spirals.
When Blanche unexpectedly visits her estranged sister Stella, she brings with her a past that will threaten their future. As Stella’s husband Stanley stalks closer to the truth, Blanche's fragile world begins to fracture. Reality and illusion collide and a violent conflict changes their lives forever.