Review: A.R.T.'s 'GLASS MENAGERIE' IS A DELICATE BALANCE OF POWER AND POETRY

Written by Tennessee Williams; set and costume design, Bob Crowley; lighting design, Natasha Katz; sound design, Clive Goodwin; music, Nico Muhly; dialect coach, Nancy Houfek; movement, Steven Hoggett; director, John Tiffany

Cast in order of appearance:

Tom, Zachary Quinto; Amanda, Cherry Jones; Laura, Celia Keenan-Bolger; The Gentleman Caller, Brian J. Smith

Performances and Tickets:

Now through March 17, American Repertory Theater, LoebDramaCenter, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass. Tickets start at $25 and are available by calling 617-547-8300 or online at www.americanrepertorytheater.org

The current production of The Glass Menagerie at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge is as paradoxically strong and delicate as the very glass figurines that serve as the play's central metaphor. Based on playwright Tennessee Williams' own guilt-ridden struggle to leave his overbearing mother and mentally ill sister in order to pursue a career as a writer, this haunting and poetic memory play balances a single mother's unflinching tenacity with the heart-breaking fragility of unfulfilled dreams.

Set in St. Louis during the Great Depression, The Glass Menagerie features one of Williams' most iconic characters, Amanda Wingfield, a transplanted Southern Belle abandoned by her husband and left to raise two children on her own. No shrinking violet, Amanda has managed to pick herself up by the bootstraps and, for the past 16 years, make a comfortable, if modest, home for her family. Now that her children are grown, she fears what their lives will become without her steady hand at the helm. She sets out on a mission, therefore, to secure their futures, hell bent on making their lives better than her own.

Ironically, the very strength that has enabled Amanda to endure immeasurable hardship is precisely what has kept her son and daughter from rising up to her expectations. Inflicting an unrelenting - albeit benevolent - tyranny over her children, Amanda has unwittingly suffocated and stifled them. As a result, her melancholy son Tom is now threatening to escape via the Merchant Marines, and her daughter Laura, mildly crippled and painfully shy, retreats inside a fantasy world inhabited by miniature glass animals.

The estimable Tony Award winner Cherry Jones stars as immutable matriarch Amanda. An imposing figure with flashing eyes, Jones' power is unassailable. Yet, she navigates a more nuanced and even likable path than many Amandas who have gone before her. Neither an all-encompassing monster nor a faded and fluttering debutante living in the delusions of the past, Jones' Amanda is first and foremost a survivor. Commanding but also warm, she tempers her ferocious persistence with a cultured gentility that buoys every badgering command and wry correction on an undercurrent of wit and unwavering love. Jones also infuses her Amanda with passion and an unbreakable will. Striding across the stage and clapping her hands energetically, like a kindergarten teacher mustering her wayward charges, Jones' Amanda desperately tries to ignite a fire in her children by using her own still-glowing embers of hope as the spark.

For Tom (Zachary Quinto), Amanda wants stability and sobriety. Never mind that his dead-end job at a shoe factory warehouse is driving him to the bars for escape. For Laura (Celia Keenan-Bolger), Amanda seeks a "gentleman caller," a good and responsible young man who will adore and protect her misfit daughter just as she adores and protects her misfit glass unicorn. But what Amanda refuses to see is that even her irrefutably dogged determination cannot force her children's destinies. Her strength alone is not enough to keep her dreams from shattering.

As Tom, Quinto serves as both narrator and antagonist, delivering some of Williams' most eloquent prose. It is his memory that creates the play, so his narration is not just storytelling but a knowing self-commentary, as well. Quinto's body language is especially revealing, changing like quicksilver with every mood or reaction. At times he paces like a caged animal, frustrated and not knowing where to turn. Other times he cowers like a wounded puppy, browbeaten by Amanda's domineering. During more playful moments, he sprawls easily on the sofa and banters with his mother in mock melodrama. But once he's reached the limit of his patience, he uncontrollably springs into action, fists flailing and invectives flying. The fact that Amanda is never shaken by his tirades is all the more infuriating and disheartening.

While Quinto and Jones provide the lion's share of dramatic tension in The Glass Menagerie, it is Bolger as Laura and Brian J. Smith as Jim, The Gentleman Caller, who turn in the most touching performances. The lithe and lovely Bolger is the personification of fragility - chin lowered, shoulders hunched, her voice not much louder than a whisper. Smith is the exact opposite - outgoing, confident, and very comfortable in his own skin. On the surface the two seem to have absolutely nothing in common. Yet, somehow, they make a connection.

Smith's genuine affability is what sets the tone in drawing Laura out in conversation. His sincere interest makes him instantly likable, and his intuitive understanding puts Laura quickly at ease. In response, Bolger's guarded body slowly opens like a blooming flower. Her speech becomes more animated, and she shows quiet delight in sharing her figurines with a new friend. When the magical evening inevitably ends, Bolgers' reaction is positively heart-breaking. Instead of profound disappointment she registers a kind of peaceful acceptance. The way she gently compares herself to her prized unicorn is quite simply sublime.

Director John Tiffany and designer Bob Crowley have done the near impossible with their concept for The Glass Menagerie. They have created a physical environment that actually sets the action adrift in space and time. Seemingly suspended in mid-air and floating on what appears to be a river, three sparsely decorated acting areas suggest the dining room, living room, and fire escape of the Wingfield's modest apartment. These platforms hover above the stage area in otherworldly fashion, surrounded not by walls but by endless darkness. The effect is that of Tom's selective memory come to life, the dark abyss of his past punctuated only by iconic images of his typewriter, Laura's tiny unicorn, and the ball gown that Amanda dredges out of storage for the family's pivotal dinner with Jim.

The river also becomes a magnifying mirror for the characters and their actions. In turn they each try to find themselves in its reflective surface. If one or two of them lingers a bit too long looking at their reflections, perhaps it is the river beckoning them to jump and set themselves free. The set, then, becomes another powerful character adding an ominous dimension to the play. It's a stroke of genius that brings more clarity to The Glass Menagerie than I have ever seen.

It's hard to believe that this is the first Tennessee Williams play ever produced by the A.R.T. Let's hope it won't be the company's - or Tiffany's - last.

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL J. LUTCH: Celia Keenan-Bolger as Laura; Zachary Quinto as Tom, Cherry Jones as Amanda, and Celia Keenan-Bolger; Celia Keenan-Bolger and Cherry Jones; Zachary Quinto and Cherry Jones; Zachary Quinto; Celia Keenan-Bolger and Brian J. Smith as The Gentleman Caller; Zachary Quinto, Cherry Jones, Brian J. Smith and Celia Keenan-Bolger

To post a comment, you must register and login.