RCRT's "Glass Menagerie" Great Theatre
By Lane Crockett
The Forum
crockettl@comcast.net
River City Repertory Theatre--the area's first professional
theatre--is bringing its initial season to a triumphant finale with a superb
rendering of Tennessee Williams' classic, "The Glass Menagerie."
From the company's debut with Lillian Hellman's, "The Little Foxes," through Stephen Sondheim's, "A Little Night Music" and now with, "The Glass Menagerie," RCRT has set its standard, and that is quite high. The consistency is admirable and the reason people who love theatre, and serious theatergoers, should flock to see "Menagerie."
The final offering gets a boost with the appearance of Tony Award- winning actress, Donna McKechnie in the now legendary role of Amanda Wingfield. "The Glass Menagerie" is Williams' autobiographical memory play in which the playwright comes to terms with, or at least revisits, his desertion of his mother and sister.
Tom, the narrator, recalls the events that lead to his leaving St. Louis, and leaving behind his painfully shy and slightly crippled sister, Laura, and his anguished and desperate mother, Amanda. A creative, romantic young man, Tom feels stifled and on the fast track to nowhere, which is heightened by Laura's helplessness and Amanda's demands.
The catalyst leading to Tom's going away is the Gentleman Caller he brings home one evening to appease Amanda who is looking for someone to take care of Laura and to assure some kind of future when Tom does leave.
Under the direction of Patric McWilliams, the play springs to life with a new freshness, part of that due to his own vision of this almost ephemeral play and part due to his and McKechnie's different take on Amanda, the force who drives the drama.
The director reinforces Williams' idea of a memory play through such devices as lacey curtains that not only act as room dividers but also give the characters behind them the appearance of moving in, well, perhaps a dream. He enhances that haunting quality through Tristan Decker's often muted and evocative light designs that envelope the principals in a subdued glow and sometimes in half light. Technically, he and Decker seduce the audience into the drama, and audiences for this staging will be easily seduced.
In rethinking the classic, McWilliams and McKechnie have bypassed the shrewishness which often is used to interpret Amanda and replaced that with a softer but no less determined character that actually makes a great deal of sense.
Amanda's smothering love for her offspring makes Tom's sense of being stifled more palpable and, yes, understandable. Amanda is a woman caught in a cultural conflict, trying to reconcile her gracious Southern upbringing of the past with her present paltry existence in a fairly shabby St. Louis apartment. As she says, her husband worked for the telephone company and fell in love with long distance, deserting his family.
McKechnie, who won her Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical in Michael Bennett's, "A Chorus Line," and has been in a myriad of successful musicals, spreads her dramatic wings here and smoothly sails forward. Her Amanda, though seemingly soft and gracious at times, is seething with desperation and an emotional weariness that seems to drag alongside the character. It's in her quiet looks and nuanced moments that McKechnie soars.
When McKechnie's interpretation of Amanda collides with Logan Sledge's interpretation of the no less desperate and emotionally wrought Tom, the dramatic fireworks erupt into riveting theatre. What a match these two are as their characters spar in a love/hate relationship.
Sledge, a graduate of Centenary College's theatre department under Robert Buseick, was a good actor then, but he now has grown artistically by the proverbial leaps and bounds. Sledge has learned to inhabit and submerge into a character, and his Tom is at once exciting and painful to watch. The actor beautifully balances Tom, the reflective narrator, with Tom, the anguished young man of the near past, in a towering performance to savor.
Ellen Lindsay, so good in RCRT's "A Little Night Music," is even better here as the gentle, timid Laura who has poured all her romantic yearnings and hopes into a menagerie of small glass animals. The actress exudes a quiet beauty that cloaks her character. What Lindsay has been so wonderfully able to do is make Laura's feelings so real that when her character offers a weak, sometimes perfunctory smile, your heart breaks.
In the capable hands of Youree McBride, Jr., another Buseick theatre graduate, the Gentleman Caller becomes a bit of bravura stage acting that earned him spontaneous applause when he exited the stage. At first expansive and just shy of overbearing, the character reveals his other side—the quieter, disappointed young man—to the receptive Laura.
Director McWilliams has brought together and shaped such a fine ensemble that you can just sit back and admire their work. And, as one of his hallmarks as a director, he has merged stage acting with an almost cinematic execution. McWilliams' shows are noted for their flow, and this "Glass Menagerie" is no exception.
He has heightened that filmic sense with an original music score from composer Kermit Poling that underscores some of the play's most relevant moments. For his part, Poling has created some haunting musical themes, especially the shimmering, tinkling one for Laura, connoting her menagerie.
With McWilliams' atmospheric set design, this "Glass Menagerie" looks like a dream and it certainly plays as one.
