'Menagerie' plays up humor amid the darkness
Tennessee Williams' "Glass Menagerie" is on everybody's list - the Royal National Theatre' 100 most significant plays of the century (No. 25), the American Theater Critics Association's top American plays (No. 5), even the English Department of the Neue Kantonsschule of Aarau, Switzerland's list of best plays (No. 11).
On StageBy Michael Christenson.
Well it's not been on my list. I was traumatized as a young theater-goer by a claustrophobic version of "The Glass Menagerie" by a director who apparently subscribed to the St. Augustine theory of redemption - the farther you fall, the higher God lifts you up. In other words, the more oppressive a play is, the better you'll feel when it's finally over. Since then, the mere thought of "The Glass Menagerie" has inspired in me an urge to take up a hammer and shatter the figurines.
Obviously, I have issues.
Unlike normal people, however, the theater critics' early ordeals coalesce into theory. Personally, I blame Chekov for the last 100 years of drawing room dramas and sitting room sit-coms. It all goes back to "The Cherry Orchard."
I know plenty of people who think going to the theater and watching dysfunctional families is fun. I tend to not be one of them.
So, it was with great trepidation that I approached opening night. I wasn't fond of O'Neil's "Desire Under the Elms," either, (which also starred Jake Waid), but I went with an open mind and Lucy Thurber, quite fantastically, actually pared it down to a palatable play.
I should have had more faith.
"The Glass Menagerie," was written in 1941 and produced in 1945. It is a period piece, but the historical parallels are chilling: War is on the horizon, the economy is dissolving, there are protests in the streets, and some far-away foreign place named Guernica is getting bombed back to the Stone Age.
It is also a memory play. It is not about characters per se, but characters remembered, distorted through time. The language and actions have a great clarity and directness. It is an accessible play, in a way that Shakespeare sometimes isn't. After all, we have to recall, nine of Williams' plays were made into films.
The set is dark, and resembles red-flocked wallpaper and carpeting. The ceiling is peeling. Here and there are odd splotches on the wall. The scrim is gone and replaced by an enormous Plexiglas box, which is too dark and smoke-filled to let the lights of the dancehall across the alley shine through. Laura's menagerie is suspended like a Calder bereft of motion - frozen in time.
There is a version of Laura's theme, all eerie organ and distorted guitar, which is completely at odds with the time frame of the play, and yet oddly compelling.
Once you get over the visual discordance - Anni Stokes is a pale, frail belle and Jake Waid and Ekatrina Oleksa are her big, brown offspring - the play is well cast. Dan Reaume as the gentleman caller captures the hale American optimist with precision and humor.
The costumes are fine, particularly Jim (Reaume) and Tom (Waid) at dinner. (Why is it, for the most part, men's fashions don't change? Haven't we been wearing these suits since Edwardian times?)
There are several things that make this play work. First of all, the humor of the script is highlighted. Anni Stokes as the mother unintentionally flirting with the gentleman caller is a great piece of comedic business. So is Laura's turmoil at opening the door. (One of Chekhov's great contributions to theater is the fusion of the comic and tragic. Williams learned this lesson well, although some of his interpreters seem to miss that crucial point.)
As Laura herself says, "It's no tragedy."
One funny bit was cut - the "gay deceivers" scene, where Mother tells Laura to stuff hanky-wrapped powder puffs in her bra - but this was probably a good decision. I'm all for the willing suspension of disbelief, but let's not get silly.
What redeems the play is that Laura isn't blown up into some cosmic, tragic, semi-autistic figure. Most versions of Laura are played pretty dim, and it's hard not to want to whack them with a stick. Oleksa's Laura lives in a world of her own and visits the penguins every day, but you don't get the feeling she's being willfully obtuse. She could use a little work on her limp, but otherwise it's a refreshing interpretation of what is often an insipid and sentimental character.
I think, perhaps, too much is made of the autobiographical nature of this play, at the expense of how Williams' art shaped those raw events into a struggle between freedom and responsibility, setting against jazz kids dancing the night away in the brief, deceptive rainbows before the war. All art is semi-autobiographical anyway.
At the curtain, the audience rose for a standing O.
This time, I joined them.