Revivals of classic theater works are often a push on the part of artistic directors to be earnest about “good literature,” to present art for art’s sake – and for the name recognition that brings ticket buyers to the box office.

But in times of national strain, the re-staging of a tried-and-true oldie can provide a powerful experience for a community or a country.

Consider the themes of three Broadway revivals that are currently in the drama lineup for Tony Awards this year: the devastation of war (“Journey’s End”), cultural imperialism (“Translations”), and the evils of political fanaticism (“Inherit the Wind”). If watching these shows doesn’t offer insight into our own times, then the American theatergoing public is in trouble.

But what about a seemingly apolitical drama such as “The Glass Menagerie,” which the Belfast Maskers open this weekend and perform through June 17 at the Maskers Waterfront Theater? The show is often staged to attract high-school students – a laudable reason for local theaters to mount classic scripts. But the school year is winding down, which leaves the rest of us adults to ponder the implications of the play’s dysfunctional family – a spurned wife, her fragile daughter and restless son – trying to survive emotionally and financially in St. Louis in 1937.

Tennessee Williams wrote the play in 1944 and, although expectations for success were modest, it became his breakout work. Hovering in the background of the memory play, in which Tom Wingfield reflects on his genetic pull toward family abandonment, are distinctly national themes of war, Depression, sexual politics, class tension and the American Dream.

“Most plays from the 1940s and 1950s really date themselves,” said Richard Sewall, who is directing the show. “There are things in ‘Glass Menagerie’ that are as alive now as the day Tennessee Williams wrote them. All these things – men and war, trying to pay the bills, generations with ideals about how lives should be lived – are as much with us now as they were then. It feels like a contemporary play but at the same time is very much of the ’30s. So you get that double layer of American past and American present.”

This is Sewall’s third crack at the play. He staged it with a dreamlike gauziness in the 1970s at Colby College, where he taught theater for many years, and then as a gritty working-class statement in the 1980s at The Theater at Monmouth, which he founded.

Now, he said, he is shooting for a middle ground between dream and disability – the two recurring conceits in the plot. The small Belfast theater, housed in a former train station, creates an intimacy with the audience that Sewall hopes will penetrate a deeper layer of meaning.

Now in his 70s, Sewall is primarily interested in overtly political theater rather than more symbolic approaches. His new book “In the Theater of Dionysos” examines the ways in which war shaped Greek tragedy. And yet, he added, “Glass Menagerie” has provided him with a strong if subtler platform for examining contemporary issues.

“Like many people, I’m pretty horrified at the direction our country is taking at the moment,” said Sewall, who was in the Army in the 1950s. “We’re in a critical time – in the same way we were in a crisis time, a watershed moment, with the Depression. ‘Glass Menagerie’ is not a polemic. It’s not out to preach anything. Mostly it’s about people groping to get along. But when Tom says the world is waiting for bombardment, I don’t think we can avoid the resonance.”

At its most effective, said Sewall, theater – and all art – can move us from the specific (the Wingfield family) to the universal (cultural abandonment), and offer insights that sometimes get lost in daily life.

Good art, as every theater artist knows, nudges an audience toward reflection, toward imaginatively seeing the world that exists outside the theater. Most important, said Sewall, the best art allows us to see other points of view.

“Of course, the ability to see through others’ eyes is the crucial way to have humanity survive,” he said. “To recognize others, their needs, their ways of being – that’s the single biggest thing art and theater do.”

If Sewall accomplishes his goals, then when Laura blows out her candles in the final scene of this “Glass Menagerie,” audience members may find themselves pensive about the past, as well as about their own life and times.

The Belfast Maskers will present “The Glass Menagerie” at 8 p.m. June 7-9 and 14-16, and 2 p.m. June 10 and 17 at the Maskers Waterfront Theater at 43 Front St. For information and tickets, call 338-9668.