The Glass Menagerie

Under the direction of Anthony Brown and Ann Attwood, this production eloquently captures the fragile beauty and melancholy of memory, breathing life into the tale that first touched Attwood during her high school years in the 1970s.

Set against the backdrop of 1940s St. Louis, the play unfolds within the modest apartment of the Wingfield family.

We’re introduced to this bittersweet world via Jamie Chetcuti's Tom Wingfield. As both the narrator and protagonist, Chetcuti melds wistfulness with restlessness, capturing Tom's struggle between duty to his family and his aspirations for freedom. Tom's battle with responsibility as the man of the house and yearning for adventure underscores the play’s themes of escape and duty driving him to escapism with movies, adventure stories and fantasy as fleeting escapes from his burdens. 

Sarah Stubley delivers a stunning performance as Amanda Wingfield, the faded Southern belle whose vibrant recollections of her glory days contrast sharply with her present reality. Stubley vividly embraces Amanda’s complexities, showcasing her overbearing nature and underlying vulnerability. Her lively and often overbearing attempts to mould her children’s futures are grounded in love yet, they are often suffocating and unrealistic, revealing her struggles with letting go of illusions. The interplay with her children reveals the deep, sometimes toxic bond that ties them together. 

Willow Szczygiel's portrayal of Laura, Amanda’s painfully shy daughter, has a tenderness that grips your heart. Szczygiel captures Laura's fragility and inner world, particularly as she tends to her cherished collection of glass animals, and you find yourself compelled to watch her. Crippled by a slight physical disability and extreme social anxiety, Laura retreats into a world of make-believe. Shy and withdrawn, she finds comfort in her collection, which mirrors her delicate and fragile nature. 

In a moment of touching sincerity, Blake Reeves, as Jim, the “gentleman caller,” gives Laura a fleeting glimpse of hope and acceptance in a world where she often feels invisible. Anthony Brown’s emotional sound design beautifully underpins their scene, evoking a sense of intimacy and longing. 

Unlike the Wingfields, Jim is a pragmatist who embraces reality and seeks improvement through hard work and ambition. Jim's interactions with Laura uncover deep-seated vulnerabilities, while his practicality and charm highlight the Wingfields’ struggles with hope and delusion. Reeves is charismatic, charming, and tender. His visit to the Wingfield home stirs a mix of anticipation and fear, catalysing change.

This is a play in which the actors have to trust each other emotionally and physically. The directors don’t shy away from pushing their cast, bringing audible gasps from the audience and a few tears. 

Ann Attwood also lends her talents to costume and set design, further grounding the performance in its historical context. The lighting, designed and operated by Daniel Quinn, transitions from past to present, sometimes quite jarring, echoing the memories at the story's heart.

Highlights of the production include the charged mother-son exchanges between Amanda and Tom, filled with unspoken love and simmering resentment, and the moment when Laura’s glass menagerie, a symbol of her delicate existence, suffers a tragic fate. These scenes are reminders of the play's central theme: the fragility of dreams against the harsh light of reality.

The show ends, but the discussion does not. You wonder what happens to the characters at the end. Laura and her delicate world made of glass. The matriarch, clinging to the past, often lost in her illusions of grandeur.

It is ideally suited to the intimacy of Ruby’s performance space, where you feel like you’re pulled into the home of this family and then whisked back out just as quickly by Tom’s narration and reflection.

The Glass Menagerie at the Ruby Theatre is a hauntingly beautiful Walk Down Memory Lane and a poignant exploration of human vulnerability. 

Nicole Smith