The Glass Menagerie
One approaches yet another production of The Glass Menagerie with the same cautious optimism one reserves for blind dates and “experimental” cocktails. Thus, it is a pleasure, an almost indecent relief, to report that the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s latest outing, under the direction of Shannon Rush, is not only admirable but often downright enchanting. For $60, one may sit in the Odeon Theatre and feel that this modern classic has, for the most part, been treated with the kindness and respect it deserves. Every word, every moment, was crystal clear. The opening-night audience, many of whom seemed to be encountering Tennessee Williams for the first delightful time (their gasps were practically a Greek chorus), lent the evening a freshness that even world-weary frequenters of memory plays could appreciate.
Williams’ fragile, thunder-lit masterpiece has been haunting the world’s stages ever since 1944, when it tiptoed out into the light and promptly refused to leave. It is, of course, his own story dressed up for company, his mother Edwina and sister Rose glinting through every line. Williams spent his life locked in the sort of guilt that would give Freud indigestion, and if, as Oscar Wilde claimed, great art springs from outrage or self-loathing, then The Glass Menagerie is surely Williams’ most exquisite act of contrition.
“The play is memory,” announces Tom, here played with admirable restraint and a poet’s quiet exasperation by Laurence Boxhill. He shepherds us through the familial menagerie: Amanda, that perennial mother-hen-impresario (Ksenja Logos), Laura, the shy and tremulous keeper of unicorns (Kathryn Adams), and Jim, the Gentleman Caller who brings hope, heartbreak, and a mirror-ball (Jono Darby).
Ah yes - the romance! Rush’s production leans into it as though swooning on a chaise longue, and surprisingly, the thing holds. Mark Thompson’s set is a particular triumph - indeed the best I have seen in the Odeon. He stretches the stage into something dreamlike without ever abandoning the cramped intimacy that is Williams’ birthright. The lighting (Gavin Norris), sound (Andrew Howard), and Jamie Hornsby’s wistful score wrap the evening in a silvery melancholy. In addition, there are the perfect American accents, coached by Jennifer Innes, that capture the poetic rhythms and nuances of Williams’ heightened language. And that dance scene - Laura and Jim bathed in mirror-ball stardust - is enough to make one forgive all the sins of realism.
One of Rush’s cleverest conceits is to keep Tom almost always present - scribbling, watching, brooding. As beautifully played by Laurence Boxhall - it works; giving the sense that Williams himself is pacing just behind the scrim, trying once more to rewrite his past.
More divisive is the Amanda on offer. Ms Logos, a highly talented, skilled, and charismatic actor, presents a formidable Amanda who is less faded Southern belle and more survivor of several genteel hurricanes. She is strong, she is strident, and at times she teeters on the brink of hysteria - not unlike Mama Rose should she wander accidentally into a memory musical also set during the Great Depression the 1930s. The dinner scene, where Amanda appears as a coquettish doll rather than an elegant apparition from her youth, (think Bette Davis as Baby Jane) may strike some as bold and others (I raise my hand timidly) as a step too far. But dignity, perhaps, was never the point.
In sum, this is an excellent, evocative, at times daring production of The Glass Menagerie. It honours the play’s fragile legacy while prodding it into new, occasionally uncomfortable shapes. One leaves reminded that Williams’ world, like memory itself, is equal parts magic and ache.
And really, what more could one ask?
Tony Knight
Photographer: Matt Byrne
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