The Glass Menagerie (American Repertory Theater)
The production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie currently on Broadway got rave reviews, and I finally saw it. I saw the play once before, back in the early '80s, with Jessica Tandy as Amanda Wingfield, but it didn't move me like this production did, directed by John Tiffany. The centerpiece is Jones' stunning portrayal of the family matriarch, a woman trapped in her past, and struggling with the unhappiness of her two children.
I wrote about the play here, so won't go over too much of the plot. Tiffany makes some changes, eliminating the scrim (and the missing father's portrait). The set is simple, but seems to float in an inky black darkness. Their is a pool of water around it, and when Laura, the shy sister who escapes reality into her own world of glass animals, flees the water fills with pinpoints of light--stars, I suppose. Tom, when introducing the play, describes it as a memory, and when Laura appears she comes through an opening in the beat-up sofa on center stage, and when she leaves she disappears through that same hole.
Playing Tom is Zachary Quinto, best known as the newest incarnation of Mr. Spock on film. He is magnificent, a bruised man whiling away his life working in a warehouse at a shoe company, eager to break away from the bonds of his family living in St. Louis. He tells the play as a flashback, recalling the time he brought home a co-worker as a "gentleman caller" for his sister, which leads to Laura's moment of happiness, followed by her undoing.
I've seen Jones, who is something of a legend on the New York stage (I wish she would do more film if only to let more people see her) at least three times on stage, but nothing could prepare me for her Amanda. Her voice, dripping with honey, is the first thing one notices, a dignified Southern drawl that calls to mind summers on the veranda sipping lemonade. Her recitation of the day she entertained seventeen gentleman callers, or her sales pitch to ladies on the phone to renew their magazine subscription (every ailment earns the phrase, "You are a Christian martyr) are a wonder to behold. The scene in which she learns that Laura has not been attending business school--"Deception!" she cries--palpably shows her anger, but more her concern about what will happen to Laura if she does not earn a job, or, get married.
As Laura, Celia Keenan-Bolger is heartbreaking. When the gentleman caller arrives, Jones makes her answer the door, and the physicality Keenan-Bolger uses is terrific. She doesn't give her much of a limp (she is "crippled") which is right--Laura's problems are in her head.
Quinto, as Tom, similarly uses physicality. His shoulders are slumped, he stumbles from past to present. I took a while to get used to his Southern accent, a high-pitched wail, and his outbursts at his mother are loud and fierce.
Perhaps the trickiest role in the whole play is Jim O'Connor, the gentleman caller, who is hear played by Brian J. Smith. The whole last scene, in which he and Laura connect, is the crux of the play, and a bad performance could ruin it. At first I was put off by Smith--he plays O'Connor as a gee-whiz Howdy Doody type. But it's apparent that that's something of an act--O'Connor is a bruised man as well, a high school hero who has hit rough times and is an underachiever, hoping that public speaking classes will turn things around for him.
In that last scene, when he and Laura dance, and she will entertain hope, only to see it crushed, is almost too difficult to watch. The play is full of humor, but resolutely sad, especially when one knows what did happen to Williams' sister (she was lobotomized and institutionalized, and died not too long ago).
The Glass Menagerie is one of my favorite plays, and this production not only does it justice, it may be definitive.
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