Director Atri Banerjee presents an American classic from the 1940s, bringing an updated concept and interpretation of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.
The performances are spot on.
Natalie Kimmerling is delicate, fragile, the typical damsel in distress everyone expects sad little Laura Wingfield to be. However, Kimmerling’s performance is far from caricatured or one-dimensional, with her psychological and emotional worlds intrinsically linked to her interactions with everyone she encounters.
Geraldine Somerville is exquisite in her portrayal of single mother Amanda Wingfield, the faded Southern Belle. Somerville presents Amanda as an effervescent and sparkly character, very much like a glass of champagne. Underneath all her elegance and chatter lies deep sorrow. Even in her most explosive moments, the audience sees her self-pity rather than bitterness.
Kasper Hilton-Hille plays Tom Wingfield, the son who is forced to be the breadwinner and finds escapism by going to the movies. Hilton-Hille treads the delicate balance between Tom’s as a narrator—and therefore anchor—of the show, and an aimless young man struggling to find his place in the world, and within himself.
Zacchaeus Kayode plays the gentleman caller Jim O’Connor with a paradoxical mix of quiet resignation and idealism. He is definitely gentlemanly, a good listener who exudes sincerity, thus making the plot twist at the end even sweeter and well earned.
The Glass Menagerie is meant to be a memory play related from Tom’s point of view. There are many moments when it is apparent that the story is crafted from his perspective, and pushing this concept even further would make this play utter perfection.
Tom yearns for adventure; at the moment, this production seems rather comfortable in its current state. The pace remains constant and unrelenting from start to finish, apart from a dance interlude between Laura and Jim more than halfway through the second act.
Thanks to Rosanna Vize’s set design and Lee Curran’s lightning design, new life is injected into Tennessee Williams’ script. The Glass Menagerie offers a visual treat, the production distilled to a single image of a giant revolving sign. ‘PARADISE’ is displayed in large phosphorescent letters, spinning almost throughout the entire show, changing from anti-clockwise to clockwise.
Underneath it, the characters move around on a raked circular platform as if stuck in an inescapable loop. With Giles Thomas’ sound design, an incessant droning permeates throughout most of the show, like a subconscious warning one simply cannot shake. As such, perhaps the play could do with a little more momentum and a greater sense of restlessness, in order to drive events towards their conclusion. After all, Tom is desperate to escape this life.
This abstraction of the Wingfield’s world firmly thrusts the entire narrative into a sort of dream scape, wherein nothing can be trusted to be accurately depicted. The production employs clever uses of the space, and it would also be interesting to take things up a notch by heightening the stifling and suffocating atmosphere.
Atri Banerjee and the team have expertly crafted a world in which the Wingfield family suffers slowly and helplessly from the consequences of one another’s actions. In the best sense of the word, The Glass Menagerie is bleak and does Tennessee Williams’ text justice.
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