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Tower Theatre Company
THE GLASS MENAGERIE
by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Martin Buttery
Bridewell Theatre
1-5 April, 2008
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A review by Jennifer Muteteli for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Edited by Mary Couzens
A distant ambience of southern hospitality greets us as we take our seats in the Bridewell Theatre. Domestic furnishings are bathed in a warm yellow glow as the sound of swing lingers in the background. A selective crowd of theatre goers gather to watch one of Tennessee Williams most loved plays, brought to us by Tower Theatre Company, which was established in 1932. The play itself first premiered on Chicago in 1944 and went on to play on Broadway the following year, when it was met with audience and critical acclaim.
Williams’ play is an autobiographical one, reflecting his relationships with his mother and sister. There are many parallels and even actual replicas of his lived life, seen on stage. Amanda, Tom and Laura Wingfield share a small apartment in St Louis circa 1930. The story hinges on Tom’s helplessness to appease his sister’s disabilities, as well as his constant struggle for freedom, versus his responsibilities to his family. Tom acts as our narrator, a seemingly ineffectual character who in his mother’s eyes, does little to progress the family from their humble settings, though the action is set during the Great Depression, when ‘good’ jobs would have been at a premium. His smoke filled insights are not acted upon, nor are his aspirations to become a poet met, as he labours in a shoe factory, as Williams’ himself did as a young man, so he is relegated to the role of a dreamer within this memory play.
Though aspirations feature highly in text, the Wingfield’s don’t appear ready to harvest the fruits born of action. Amanda, played by Jill Batty, is ceaseless in her aspirations for her children, but is continually challenged by them, which proves doubly difficult as she is a single parent. The humanity of the mother shines through Batty, an accomplished actor who brings warmth and humour to the role of a fading southern belle. Gone are her days of her gentlemen callers, and she is left reciting her memories amidst fears that her daughter will end up a spinster if she doesn’t start charming the gentlemen to her door.
There is a slick, switch back logic to the inadvertent gentleman caller who eventually arrives, as he is an unknowing dinner guest/co-worker of Tom’s whose positive views allow Laura a brief respite which is undone as quickly as it is given. Ultimately, Laura is too far gone; Williams’ actual sister was lobotomised and ended her days in a sanatorium.
Mother attempts, with an iron will to keep the family together and strive for success, but Laura suffers from the ultimate inescapability of her fate. Though, I feel there was room for a more intriguing interpretation of Laura, as played by Miriam Smith. Laura is a “cripple”, however, the physical realization of this appeared as an after thought, as though the limp was added as an extra, as opposed to an aliment she lives and breathes with. Due to her relatively flat character, one can’t quite comprehend the gentlemen caller’s momentary attraction towards her, adding to the sense that we may be witness to a scene from a movie, mirroring those that Tom sneaks out to frequent on a nightly basis.
What we are witness to, it could be claimed, is one of the most admired plays of the twentieth century. One possible reason why the play is so admired structurally may be its looping nature, with everything tightly returning back to itself. Laura is like the fragile glass animals that she carefully polishes - precious glass, illuminated by light.
However, if we follow the light, symbolism becomes clearer. The smoky light of a stream of cigarettes smoked on the fire escape by the narrator, the light of the movie projector that draws Tom away from his family nightly, the electricity that lights or does not light the apartment; “Where was Moses when the light went out?”Amanda asks, when the lights suddenly go out. As they flicker and fade during our final, fateful evening, when we meet Laura’s unknowing gentlemen caller, we are returned to timeless, romantic candlelight. The light that binds the family is a natural light, a slither of a moon, which compels them to embrace and smile, and wish. Their moon, however, tends to wane and be eclipsed by another much more powerful light, that of the absent father, ‘a telephone man in love with long distances,’ who’d abandoned his family long ago. The gentlemen caller himself was seen, as Williams declared, as a symbol of the "long delayed but always expected something that we long for."
Perhaps one may wonder how significant The Glass Menagerie is sixty-four years on, in the face of possibly larger and more important stories and, whether American nostalgia, in terms of the play’s representation of the human condition, is still relevant. However, this safe production, adhering to a traditional handling of an American classic, possibly insulates the somewhat revolutionary impact the play may have conjured up at the time.
However, if you want to see an all American classic, make your way to the Bridewell by April 5th and you won’t be disappointed.
Bridewell Theatre
Bride Lane, Fleet Street. EC4
Tickets: 020 7353 1700
www.towertheatre.org.uk
Evenings at 7.45 p.m.
Tuesday 1st - Saturday 5th April
Matinée at 3 p.m.
Saturday 5th April
www.bridewelltheatre.org
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