The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams |
As
revealed in the opening lines of the play, The Glass Menagerie is
told through the memory of Tom Wingfield, a restless soul trapped
in a stifling factory job as the reluctant breadwinner for a family
abandoned by his father.
His mother Amanda, once a grand Southern socialite, struggles to regain her former glory through her children, while her painfully shy daughter Laura retreats from the world’s harsh realities into her collection of little glass animals. The arrival of a “gentleman caller” could be a sign of hope or a disturbance that will shatter their fragile home.
This poetic and complex drama, revered as a masterwork of modern
theatre, is Tennessee Williams’ most autobiographical work
and one of his greatest plays.
The Glass Menagerie was Williams’ first critical success when it opened in Chicago in 1944 and premiered on Broadway in 1945. Following its Broadway premiere, the play won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle and was revived on Broadway in 1965 and again in 1983.
In 1950, the film adaptation of The Glass Menagerie, starring Jane Wyman and Kirk Douglas, received the New York Film Critics’ Circle Award despite the playwright’s dissatisfaction with the screenplay’s departure from the original script.
Making her professional directing debut with The Glass Menagerie is PRTC Associate Artist Michelle DiDomenico.
“Michelle is more than ready to take this next step in her theatrical career,” PRTC Artistic Director Guy Sanville comments.
“She is what the Purple Rose is all about, developing talent. She started here as an apprentice, then became one of our top stage managers. She is a fine actor, a talented designer and a strong leader. We are thrilled to have her make her professional directing debut at the Purple Rose.”
The cast of The Glass Menagerie included Ryan Carleson, Michelle Mountain, Molly Thomas and Tom Whalen.
Critics' Quotes
"Michelle DiDomenico's staging at Purple Rose Theatre is most gloriously alive." Martin F. Kohn Purple Rose delivers powerful 'Menagerie' "All four actors do excellent work… the production has great pacing, beautiful tableaus, and a refreshing sense of its own humor, thus reminding us of precisely why 'Glass' became such a timeless classic in the first place." Jenn McKeeThe Ann Arbor News
"Just as Spanish moss clings to the gnarled branches of live oak trees everywhere in the Deep South, seeming to take sustenance from the very air, actress Michelle Mountain as Amanda Wingfield clings to the life of her adult son Tom in Purple Rose Theatre’s brilliant revival of 'The Glass Menagerie.'... Williams’ prose has seldom been as well articulated as it is by Tom Whalen as both the narrator and the still-young adult son Tom Wingfield... Purple Rose has done an excellent job recapturing the nuances of Williams’ words." Tom HelmaLansing City Pulse "It's a smart theater executive who understands that playing it safe does little to stretch the artistic legs of his theater company. So it was refreshing and fascinating to watch the PRTC tackle 'The Glass Menagerie' - even more so since the production also marks Michelle DiDomenico's professional directing debut. It takes guts to begin your directorial career with such a well-known and revered classic, and for that alone DiDomenico deserves respect.
The Bottom Line: Although the low-key approach to the Williams classic drama might take a while to warm up to, it certainly delivers in the second act!" Donald V. Calamia
This most intimate of theaters brings the audience so close to the action that you can almost hear shy, crippled Laura's heart break when she realizes her one and only gentleman caller is already spoken for. It's a tiny sound in a vast universe of indifference, but it registers, conveying what another writer in another time described as "the still, sad music of humanity." Terry Pow |
FOUR STARS out of four stars
Purple
Rose makes ‘Glass Menagerie’ shine
But
what really matters, of course, is not DiDomenico's resume
but her skills at translating Williams' complex, beautifully
written characters from the printed page to the stage. Her
quiet and almost underplayed concept almost feels oddly wrong
at first. Yet as the show progresses, it begins to make total
sense within the confines of the PRTC space… The result,
then, is a production in which the characters - and the audience
- more fully experience the emotional highs and lows Williams
built into his script. It's a treat that one does not always
obtain in other productions.
"I
can imagine no better performance space in which to revisit
Tennessee Williams' delicate drama of disappointments, 'The
Glass Menagerie.'