Review: THE GLASS MENAGERIE Makes Welcome Return at Ford's Theatre

Memories painful and poignant intermingle through a smoky haze in the sharp and vivid production of Tennessee Williams' THE GLASS MENAGERIE now onstage at Ford's Theatre. Painstakingly directed by Mark Ramont, the production boasts a superb cast of actors whose nuanced and detailed performances mine the emotional depths of Williams' early and personal play.

Tom Story is known from many appearances throughout Washington DC stages and he can add his finely tuned performance as the narrator Tom to his curriculum vitae. From the first slow drag on his cigarette to his last, Story's turn as Tom is tinged with melancholy and reveals the tortured soul of a man lost in a sea of memories - based at least partly on the playwright himself. "I am the opposite of the stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." And what an illusion it is, this memory play that is now part of not only American theatre history but the world's.

As Tom weaves his spell of memories and moments with his family, we meet the two Wingfield women whose presence looms large: his mother Amanda and sister Laura. Relationships are usually complicated and Williams' play offers a puzzle of emotional highs and lows, flights of fancy and the harshest of realities. Director Ramont, along with his artistic design collaborators, have fashioned an atmosphere that provides an incubator of imagination for Tom's memories to fly free: the remnants of a movie theatre, stacks of seats piled high on the sides, with a gossamer thin curtain on which bits of newsreel footage and photographs appear and dissolve at will.

As the former debutant and matriarch of the Wingfield clan, Madeleine Potter makes an auspicious Ford's Theatre debut, after many appearances on Broadway and in film. Potter paints a vivid portrait of the proud Southern Belle who wants nothing more than a perfect life for her children, especially Tom's younger sister Laura. Amanda's sensibilities are at odds with Tom's distracted nature and unmentionable lifestyle outside the home - his constant "going to the movies" being a veil over behavior that dare not speak its name when the play was written in the mid-1940s. Amanda pins her hopes on her pretty daughter to be a sought after catch for a suitable young man but has blinders on to see Laura's debilitating shyness. Potter's Amanda is far from a one-note harridan; her performance is layered portrayal of a devoted mother who lives with one foot in the past and is afraid to face what her adult children have become. The actress uses her lovely voice to great advantage, using every bit of vocal range from a genteel drawl to a pained whisper.

As the lovely and shy Laura, Jenna Sokolowski was born to play the role of the fragile girl who dotes on her glass animal collection and still holds a candle for her one and only crush from high school. Adored by her troubled brother and doted upon by her protective mother, Laura is a prisoner in her own jail of self-doubt. Sokolowski has the perfect little girl lost and dreamy quality that makes her scenes with the Gentleman caller all the more heartbreaking. As the fourth character, Jim, Thomas Keegan is the strapping, confident, former high school star who enters unwittingly into the Wingfield's den of dysfunction. Tall, lanky and no-nonsense, it is easy to fall for Jim's charms as played by Keegan. Already one of the great scenes in 20th century drama, when Laura and Jim spend a candlelit evening reminiscing and making a connection, the walls of the theatre seem to fall away in a truly romantic moment of theatre magic.

Ramont's production, especially in the hands of such skilled actors, finds a happy balance between the dashes of comedy that are scattered throughout the play's more melodramatic moments. The beauty of Williams' prose is also punctuated with stunning silences that allow for the production to breathe and for the audiences to take in the language to full effect.

If time is the longest distance between two places, time has been good to THE GLASS MENAGERIE and it has found welcome place for a few weeks at Ford's Theatre. Spend some time with the Wingfields and enjoy the "disguise of illusion."

Follow Jeffrey Walker @jeffwalker66

THE GLASS MENAGERIE continues through February 21, 2016 at Ford's Theatre, 511 10th St, NW, WDC (between E and F streets). For information or tickets, click HERE or call (800) 982-2787 or (202) 347-4833. @fordstheatre #FordsGlass

PHOTO CREDIT: Scott Suchman

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