Review: THE GLASS MENAGERIE at Arena Dinner Theater

One of the true joys of the Arena Dinner Theatre is its ability to pack a wide variety of styles and genres into a single season. After a musical drama, a murder mystery, and two comedies, Arena gives us a classic drama: "The Glass Menagerie." The semi-autobiographical play by Tennessee Williams was written in 1944, it takes place in 1937 during the Depression. It gives a fictionalized back story of his mentally unstable sister, their overbearing mother, and his own escape from the harsh reality he grew up in.

The Narrator (Brian Wagner) in black turtleneck and pea coat, smokes his way through the play's opening monologue. He is the older version of Williams' alter ego, Tom Wingfield (Williams' first name was actually Thomas)-now a slightly bitter, guilt-ridden Beatnik who followed in his father's drifter footsteps. The Narrator tells the audience that this is a "memory play," and as such is not entirely based in reality.

Much could be said for the lives of the play's characters.

The Narrator hands the play over to his younger version, played by Brock Graham. Tom Wingfield and his older sister Laura (Taryn Wieland) are two grown children living with their mother, Amanda (Carol Howell-Wasson).

Tom works in a dead-end job at a shoe warehouse in order to help pay the bills for his family. Laura, who has a slight limp leftover from childhood polio, also suffers from crippling shyness, low self-esteem, and probably severe clinical depression or anxiety.

Amanda is a former southern belle who lives in an illusion of her own creation. She talks incessantly as if she could will her dreams into reality. Rather than marrying one of the many wealthy "gentlemen callers" she claims to have courted her during her youth, she married a simple telephone worker who left the family. She both loves and hates her children, whose failure to launch is both a comfort to her in her loneliness and a mirror of her own sense of failure.

Amanda pins all her hopes for Laura's future on a visit from Jim O'Connor (Brock Eastom), who, she has convinced herself, will instantly fall in love with her emotionally and physically damaged daughter and solve all the family's problems.

The results of the meeting are exhilarating, touching, and heartbreaking.

Eastom is effortlessly hilarious as Jim O'Connor, Tom's co-worker and Laura's high school crush. He portrays Jim's slightly nervous false confidence with goofy realism, and when he impulsively kisses Laura, it's hard to tell whether he has good intentions or is just a 1930s "me too" creep.

Wieland is brilliant as Laura. Her shoulder-hunching posture and quiet, stammering voice convey Laura's "defect" more than a limp could. Graham captures Tom's moodiness and resignation as he teeters back and forth between his duty to his family-particularly his sister-and his desire to make his own way in the world.

Howell-Wasson gives her usual knockout performance as Amanda, one of theatre's tour de force roles. She slips in and out of dreamy self-deception and brutal realization effortlessly. The audience feels about her the way her children do-it's impossible to hate her, but it's also kind of impossible not to.

The minimalistic set design (by Scott Frey, who also directed) and lighting (by Jim Wasson) help showcase the dialogue and performances.

The Arena Stage is small, so Laura's limp is by necessity understated. Although it isn't featured prominently in this production, Laura's "glass menagerie" of animal figurines represent the fragility of Laura's mental state, perhaps more so than her physical limitation. It also symbolizes the fragility of the family's hold on reality and their ability to stay together.

But for just a brief, beautiful moment in time, the audience almost believes in the illusion.

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