The Glass Menagerie at The Shaw Festival

The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee William’s 1944 memory play (and the one that established him as a major playwright) is receiving a thrilling production at The Shaw Festival. Directed by Hungarian director László Bérczes in the intimate Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, it features four nearly flawless performances that may convince you that this is the best rendition of this classic that you’ve ever seen.

In Depression-era St. Louis, the Wingfield family lives a hard-scrabble life in a cramped apartment. Amanda, a single mother from the deep South, long ago abandoned by a “charming” husband, frets over making ends meet and what will become of her children. Tom, the elder, who narrates the play wants to be a writer, but he works a low-paying job in a warehouse and disappears at night, supposedly to go to the movies. Laura, the painfully shy younger daughter, has a deformed leg and a slight limp. She has dropped out of a business school and seldom leaves the flat, except to run errands for her mother. Instead, she plays obsessively with her collection of petite glass animals, the menagerie of the title.

Amanda recalls happier times at her home, Blue Mountain, when she was young and gay and never at a loss for “gentlemen callers.” The main action of the play revolves around her effort to get Tom to invite a coworker to dinner so Laura might find her own gentleman caller. It goes well. Until it doesn’t.

Thanks to Williams’ lilting prose and keen command of character, The Glass Menagerie still packs an emotional wallop in our more cynical time, despite Tom’s warning that the play will be “sentimental.”

Bérczes’ fellow Hungarian Balázs Cziegler has done wonders with the narrow confines of the Studio’s in-the-round playing space by making it even narrower, and creating a claustrophobic warren of small rooms, highlighting the pressure of the tight quarters in which the Wingfields exist so uncomfortably.

Amanda Wingfield is a role usually associated with great ladies of the theatre and Allegra Fulton, making her Shaw debut, can feel right at home with the stars who have preceded her. Her Amanda never lapses into a caricature of the faded southern belle, an ever-present temptation with this role. Nor does she make the mistake of turning Amanda into a crazy person. While her Amanda is certainly over-dramatic and even self-delusional at times, Fulton never lets us forget that here is a strong woman doing her level best to keep her family afloat in trying times with ever diminishing prospects.

André Sills, who was a towering Coriolanus last season at the Stratford Festival, brings out the seething anger, born of frustration, that eats away at Tom, while Julia Course makes a touching Laura. Finally, Jonathan Tan hits just the right note as Jim, the gentleman caller, who all too briefly offers a ray of hope for Laura.

I had my quibbles. André Sills is such a force of nature and his outbursts of anger so genuinely terrifying that his performance, as finely observed as it is, occasionally tends to distort the shape of play. Hanne Loosen has made some odd choices of costume. I found it impossible to believe that Amanda would let Laura dress as shabbily as Loosen has and Tom’s never-changing outfit seemed far too modern. On the other hand, the embarrassingly dated dress that Amanda wears to greet Laura’s gentleman caller is perfect. The program credits two voice and dialect coaches yet, while Amanda was believable as a transplant from the deep South, Tom and Laura’s very different accents had little to do with St. Louis.

The Glass Menagerie continues through October 12, 2019

The Shaw Festival
www.shawfest.com
(800) 511-7429
(905) 468-2172

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