REVIEW: The Glass Menagerie – Malvern Theatres (Tuesday, March 26 to Saturday, March 30).
ANY man who has the brass neck to change his name from the everyday Thomas to ‘Tennessee’ certainly gets my vote.
The celebrated American author apparently decided on the name change when he entered a playwriting competition for the under 25s. Not only did he lie – he was then aged nearly 28 – but he travelled several hundred miles to another town in a further attempt to complete the fraud and thereby deceive the judges.
Thomas Lanier Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, and the majority, if not all his most famous works, were set in the Deep South during the Great Depression.
Together with the fellow members of that generation of writers hailing from below the Mason-Dixon line, he wove complex, intense tales of Southern life that brimmed with human frailty and societal tensions.
The eternally romantic notion of the Lost Cause in a fabled land oozing with mint juleps, white oaks and Spanish moss waving in the Southern breeze, is never far away from his consciousness, as evidenced in classic stories such as Sweet Bird of Youth and A Streetcar Named Desire.
As it happens, this particular play’s minimalistic set conjures up none of that intoxicating imagery, and appears to almost purposely avoid the standard cliché. Perhaps director Atri Banerjee has deliberately done this, maybe to allow Williams’ glorious language full rein without any visual distractions.
What dominates this otherwise barren wasteland is the huge neon dance hall sign that reads ‘Paradise’. It couldn’t be more ironic, for it hangs like the suffocating wings of some enormous bird of prey, poised to drop on some hapless victim.
Nevertheless, this was the only minus point in what is otherwise an absorbing piece of mid-20th century drama by a hugely talented writer.
The Glass Menagerie is a semi-autobiographical piece which traces the empty existence of Tom Wingfield (Kasper Hilton Hille) who lives out a fantasy life through his constant visits to the movies.
The darkness of his cinematic sanctuary is a refuge from his dead end job at a warehouse, and mirrors a life that is going nowhere.
His sister Laura (Natalie Kimmerling) is also an oddball, retreating into her absent father’s phonograph records and poring over her collection of glass animals. And completing this straining at the seams set-up is their mother Amanda (Geraldine Somerville).
It’s a dysfunctional situation and the watermelon cart is soon to be seriously upset by the arrival of Jim O’Connor (Zacchaeus Kayode), who has been parachuted into the family home by Tom, as a potential suitor for Laura. Amanda decides that the family fortunes can now be changed forever.
Ms Somerville cuts an impressive figure as the Southern matriarch, a manipulative individual whose clipped, at times icy demeanour could chill even a Mississippi high summer noon time.
Yes, she is intent on changing the family’s fortunes, but will the price be too great? Watching this woman going at full tilt, one is reminded of the doomed mouse mesmerised by a snake. One false move and all that.
The tensions in this story of a family enmeshed in a complex web of love and conflicting loyalties never let up for single second. For not far below the surface of a mother and her siblings seemingly at peace with one another lies a contradictory tale of close relatives at war with themselves.
The Glass Menagerie, produced by acclaimed director Banerjee, is a heart-wrenching masterpiece that has lost none of its power and impetus since its creation in 1944, and is therefore warmly recommended.
Oh yes, and one more thing. When plain old Thomas became ‘Tennessee’ the ensuing result flew in the face of the old idea that liars never prosper, because he won the playwriting contest hands down.
But then, you’d probably guessed that hadn’t you?