THE GLASS MENAGERIE.

London

THE GLASS MENAGERIE
by Tennessee Williams

Apollo Theatre
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed 3pm Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 890 1101
www.nimaxtheatres.com/menagerie (booking fee applies)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 February

Crystal-clear, if not complete Menagerie.
Glass Menagerie is a memory play upstaged by its own second act. It’s as well the sustained scene of Gentleman Jim O’ Connor’s visit to the poor white Southern US Wingfield home is the play’s climax, for it’s by far the best part of Rupert Goold’s production. Mark Umbers gives Jim a sturdy cheerfulness, former high-school glory clearly mixing with amiable mediocrity.

Amanda Wingfield’s usually the forceful mother trying to shoehorn shy daughter Laura, with her limp, into the life Amanda had herself lost through an unfortunate marriage. Goold allies the women more closely, as if one personality had taken two possible directions. Jessica Lange’s Amanda only half-deludes herself Tom’s shoe-dispatch workmate can help recover the lost glory-world of Southern comforts.

As her son seems the ghost of his departed father and her daughter repeatedly disappointing her, Amanda maintains a surprising serenity through illusion. The day she’s angry (restrainedly so here) with Laura for dropping out of her secretarial course is also the one where she hasn’t arrived for induction as a Daughter of the American Revolution.

This aligning of the women, Amanda as Laura after a generation’s survival (and without the self-consciousness of the limp) reaches its climax as the Gentleman’s about to call. Amanda’s dress, in most productions an elaborate frock from Gone with the Wind days, chimes-in with its faded green with Laura’s dress. More frills, but the same material.

Goold’s is a strongly-defined if partial approach. As is Ed Stoppard’s narrating Tom, the authorial alter-ego (even Tom’s sacking for writing a poem on a shoebox comes from Tennessee’s life – and Tennessee was born Tom, too). It’s an angry yet unmoving performance, literally so as Goold places him statically centre stage for much of his soliloquising.

This is strange, given the huge fire-escapes of Matthew Wright’s setting, which dwarfs the Wingfield’s home as a skeletal, dowdy place solid only as a fake proscenium arch with faded flowery wallpaper. Paul Pyant’s lighting throws the set outlines impressively onto the theatre walls in near-abstract patterns. Adam Cork’s sound-score pulsates near-subliminally, the local jazz-clubs seeming remarkably muted in their outpourings.

Tom Wingfield: Ed Stoppard
Amanda Wingfield: Jessica Lange
Laura Wingfield: Amanda Hale
The Gentleman Caller: Mark Umbers

Director: Rupert Goold
Designer: Matthew Wright
Lighting: Paul Pyant
Sound: Sebastian Frost
Soundscore/Music: Adam Cork
Movement: Aletta Collins
Dialect coach: Jacquie Crago

2007-02-22 10:49:16