As proven by the immortal playwrights—Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Wilde, O’Neill, Miller, Williams and many more—great plays live on beyond their initial run to be experienced by audiences who, over the years, decades, and centuries, are moved to the tears and laughter exemplified by the iconic masks of tragedy and comedy. Tennessee Williams’ first successful play, The Glass Menagerie, was produced first in Chicago in 1944 before moving on to Broadway in 1945, where it was honored with The New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The play has been revived again and again on Broadway, off Broadway, in London and around the world. It has been produced at regional theatres, in community theatres, as well as in schools and universities. I saw it for the first time when I was a just-out-of-college lighting technician at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. So it was with great anticipation that I booked myself and my favorite theatre going pal and best girl, Sylvia, to see and review the new production of the play at International City Theatre in Long Beach. I was not disappointed.
At the outset of the action, a young man in his twenties, Tom Wingfield (Ty Mayberry), dressed in the pea coat, watch cap and muffler of a merchant seaman, lights a cigarette and tells the audience with casual intimacy that they will be seeing a “memory play.” This presentational device is at least as old as Shakespeare (“O for a muse of fire”…Henry the Fifth) and lets the audience know that it won’t be a traditional three-act play. Set before the war in mid-1930s Saint Louis, The Glass Menagerie is an intimate family drama that concerns a household struggling with the economic concerns of the time as well as a history of spousal abandonment. Amanda Wingfield (Jennifer Parsons), a Mississippi belle, spurned a plethora of available wealthy beaus and instead fell for a handsome charmer who abandoned his family, eventually sending a letter that coldly read, “Hello. Goodbye.” His photo looms large projected on an upstage wall. The core of the action has to do with Tom’s slightly older sister Laura (Lizzie Zerebko), a shy, withdrawn girl who limps, a condition that keeps her housebound despite Amanda’s efforts to get her out in the world. Laura failed to graduate high school; her efforts at learning typing at a business school fared worse. Amanda’s fondest wish is that Laura could receive a “gentleman caller” who would sweep her up out of her cocoon and into a normal life. But Laura’s only passion is her collection of glass figurine animals, the menagerie of the title. The wished for gentleman caller, Jim O’Connor (Emilio Garcia-Sanchez), a co-worker of Tom’s at the warehouse where they eke out an unsatisfying living, does make an appearance, which leads to complexities, a dramatic climax, and an affecting dénoument.
The action of the play, with the Williams’ inimitable flow of language, keeps the audience rapt as it absorbs the quirks of the characters and the humor and pathos of their individual situations. The cast is sterling led by a bravura performance by Ms. Parsons who does justice to the first of Tennessee Williams’ grand females. Ms. Zerebko gives a nuanced, complex performance as Laura. Mr. Mayberry’s Tom is instantly likeable as he bonds with the audience, but fierce in his desire to escape the smothering life he leads as Amanda’s son and Laura’s brother. And Mr. Garcia-Sanchez, handsome and charming as Jim, is the perfect picture of the disappointed former high school hero struggling to regain that glory.
Directed by John Henry Davis, ICT’s production eschews kitchen sink realism with Christopher Scott Murillo’s flexible set (lit by Stacy McKenney) that suggests a rear tenement apartment with the Paradise Dance Hall across the alley. Costumes designed by Kim DeShazo support time, place, character and action. The show benefits from the talents of sound designer Corwin Evans, prop designers Patty and Gordon Briles, and hair and wigs designer Anthony Gagliardi. The stage is managed with aplomb by Victoria A. Gath.
Produced by caryn desai, the International City Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie continues through September 9 at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 330 East Seaside Way in Long Beach.
Paul Myrvold's Theatre Notes 