THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Director Geoff Elliott reinvigorates a 20th-century classic to stunning effect in A Noise Within’s 2019 revival of Tennessee Williams’ 1944 chef-d’oeuvre The Glass Menagerie.

(Glass Menagerie newbies: Click here to find out who’s who and what’s what.)

 Elliott’s intention to distinguish his Glass Menagerie from the thousands that have preceded it is evident from our first glimpse of a stage occupied only by a fire-escape-like staircase, a display of glass figurines, a Victrola, a manual typewriter, and most intriguingly, an empty wheelchair and narrow horizontal screen filled with black-and-white images from TV’s golden era.

If The Glass Menagerie has since its Broadway debut been a memory play set in the Depression-era 1930s, scenic designer Fred Kinney makes it clear from the get-go that narrator Tom Wingfield will be speaking to us from the Eisenhower ’50s while at the same time suggesting that the front-and-center wheelchair, found nowhere in Williams’ script, will be of major significance.

The aforementioned screen, too, will play an important role throughout, Kristin Campbell’s projection design not only introducing scenes with typewritten phrases from Williams’ script (“Has anyone ever told you that you were pretty, Laura?” “After the fiasco…”) but also framing key images: blue roses, a yearbook photo of a high school basketball player, and most significantly, a spot-on portrait of a young man whose engagingly grin lingers on a decade and a half after he made good his love for long distances.

 Then, as Tom (Rafael Goldstein) starts in on his reminiscences, set pieces begin to appear, bringing the Wingfield apartment to more detailed life.

Director Elliott reminds us that The Glass Menagerie is first and foremost a play about memories by initially having Tom step in and out of a breakfast-table conversation with his faded Southern belle mother Amanda (Deborah Strang) and his cripplingly shy 20something sister Laura (Erika Soto), the diners’ mimed tableware and utensils later replaced by authentic props as Tom’s memories become more concrete and keep him physically present from this point on.

As in the best of Glass Menageries before it, Elliott’s revolves around three superb lead performances, A Noise Within’s grandest of grande dames and two of the company’s most gifted younger resident artists breathing fresh new life into frustrated dreamer Tom, his alternately trying and endearing mother, and his fragile-as-glass sister, and the fact that all three have previously shared the stage only adds to the authenticity of long-forged family ties that allow the Wingfields to survive daily tiffs either large and small.

Fresh too is Kasey Mahaffy’s take on Gentleman Caller Jim O’Connor, quintessentially Irish from his red hair and freckles down to his toes, a self-made man whose confident bravado masks moments of self-doubt and a heart of gold.

Ken Booth lights the production with a burnished glow enhanced by sound designer Robert Oriel’s mood-setting original music.

Costumer Jenny Foldenauer makes some daring but effective creative choices, in particular Jim’s knickers-and-argyle-socks ensemble and a party dress that would do Snow White proud if her favorite colors were yellow and blue.

Sydney Russell scores design points too for her abundance of period props, most especially Laura’s treasured menagerie of glass, and wig and makeup designer Shannon Hutchins merits her own kudos as does dialect coach Nike Doukas.

Kayla Hammett is stage manager and Grace Gaither is assistant stage manager. Alycia Matz is costume assistant. Jane Macfie, Ty Mayberry, Roshni Shukla, and Tavis Doucette are understudies.

As for that wheelchair, while the payoff it provides may make this Glass Menagerie the grimmest of the many I’ve seen, it also ends up as memorable a revival of this American masterwork as any Tennessee Williams fan could possibly wish for.

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A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
March 2, 2019
Photos: Craig Schwartz

 

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