The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams was 33 and a published poet when he had his first Broadway hit play in 1944. He called The Glass Menagerie a ‘memory play’ and it deals poetically with memories from his own unhappy Mississippi childhood. This welcome Ensemble revival, splendidly directed by Mark Kilmurry, is a reminder of the author’s spellbinding dialogue and bubbling-under-the-surface character tensions that would, three years later, explode into A Streetcar Named Desire.

Narrator and protagonist Tom (Tom Stokes), clearly identified as the playwright himself, introduces the desperate Wingfield family, deserted by his escaped father. His mother Amanda (Vanessa Dowling) is the ‘faded Southern belle’ prototype of a string of later tough/terrifying Williams’ characters; his sister Laura (Catherine McGraffin) is a sad, shy, limping recluse, as emotionally fragile as her prized collection of glass animals.

When, reluctantly, Tom goes along with his mother’s plan to bring home a ‘Gentleman Caller’ to meet Laura, the emotional stakes are raised all round. Jim (Eric Beecroft), a former school friend of the siblings, soon finds himself as enmeshed in this creepy family’s web as does the audience.

Performances are excellent. Stokes gives Tom/Tennessee particular grace and sadness. ‘How lucky dead people are,’ he says. Pity he couldn’t just visit the Dance Hall across the street and meet some nice young man, but this is 1944, remember, and the escaped playwright will become much more specific in later dramas.

A major contribution to the success of this production is the setting by Lucilla Smith. Quite the best I have seen at the Ensemble in recent seasons, it somehow gives the illusion of space in this tiny theatre, gives two separate interiors and properly features a rock-steady fire escape. For everyone wants to escape — from their family, their limitations, their memories.

Frank Hatherley

Images: (top) Tom Stokes and Eric Beecroft & (lower) Vanessa Downing. Photographer: Natalie Boog.