Sometimes the art of adaptation, to simply fight for a story to be seen, can make a career. Rejected as a screenplay while he worked under contract at MGM, Tennessee Williams reworked a pet-project of his for the stage – employing all elements of expression outside the cinematic. Today, almost 70 years after it premiered to a rousing reception at the Civic Theatre in Chicago, The Glass Menagerie is still an audience favourite and one of the most-anticipated productions of La Boite’s 2013 season.
Set in a small St Louis apartment, Williams’ introduces audiences to the Wingfield family – Amanda Wingfield (Helen Howard), the matriarch (and a single mother ever since her husband left) and her two grown-up children, Tom (Jason Klarwein) and Laura (Kathryn Marquet). Disenchanted with the cards life has dealt, the Wingfields indulge in a heavy dose of escapism – Amanda reminisces a youth in which she was courted by eligible men; Tom escapes to the movies before growing tired of the jealousy they trigger within him; and Laura, shy and ‘crippled’, soothes herself by playing old records and polishing her prized menagerie of miniature glass animals. Reality creeps up when Tom, at the insistence of his mother, finally brings home Jim (Julian Curtis), a ‘gentleman caller’ for sister Laura and soon it’s clear the very future of the family hinges on the visit’s success.
Director David Berthold clearly has great confidence in this cast, and rightfully so. What a pleasure it is to see Helen Howard in such an iconic role. As Amanda, she rattles on stage, all nervous energy and longing and delusion wrapped in a neat bow and bouquet. Having previously toured the US with Sydney Theatre Company’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire, Jason Klarwein sounds and looks so comfortable in the Williams’ universe, breezing through lengthy passages with good humour and a boyish antagonism. As Laura, Kathryn Marquet is most effective alongside Klarwein in early scenes and toward the end, emerging from her hardened shell to share a moonlit rendezvous with Julian Curtis’ daffy and startlingly optimistic Jim.
Williams’ gift for dark and biting dialogue is as present as ever and there are scenes, particularly in the second act, that are perhaps played more comically than in productions adapted for the big and small screens. That’s not to say it tips over entirely into farce. The Wingfield women are far from the Beales of Grey Gardens. Laura isn’t pathetic and nor is she portrayed that way, but some of the final scenes with Jim are so big, at times positively begging for a sitcom theme-sting, they can steal away a fleeting opportunity for the audience to stop and study Laura more closely, to feel a more intimate affection for her character.
We are told by Tom at the very top that, as a ‘memory play’, the stage is ‘dimly lit, it is sentimental, it is not realistic’. Lighting designer Glenn Hughes follows this direction, immersing the space in a soft light as if travelling back through a Vaseline lens. Visually, Penny Challen’s design has a sort-of Jacqueline Susann aesthetic – a vicious swirl of Seventies kitsch, mixed in with suitably dowdy pieces from the Fifties and Sixties. Think blossoming florals, tartan and paisley, patterns at war. Her set never clutters the space and it adapts for a big reveal at a crucial moment.
La Boite’s take on this American classic comes just as tickets go on sale for a Broadway revival in September starring Cherry Jones. And while the revival is propped up by a bigger budget than many local companies would see in a year, La Boite has once again used the Roundhouse Theatre to its full advantage, creating a space in which to inject Williams’ work with a new camp attitude, without shattering all the magic of the original text.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
La Boite, through special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, presents
The Glass Menagerie
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by David Berthold
Designer: Penny Challen
Lighting Designer: Glenn Hughes
Composer and Sound Designer: Gordon Hamilton
Associate Director: Harriet Gillies
Cast: Julian Curtis, Helen Howard, Jason Klarwein & Kathryn Marquet
Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove
3 – 31 August
