‘The Glass Menagerie’ glows anew in an exceptional staging

Tennessee Williams' classic drama benefits from a fresh approach

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

An American classic, "The Glass Menagerie" is revived so frequently that many people may feel they are all too familiar with Tennessee Williams' lovely 1945 play. Or may feel burned by bad renditions: The memory of Jessica Lange's ghastly Amanda five years ago on Broadway still makes me shudder.

So it's great to see an exceptionally beautiful off-Broadway production of "The Glass Menagerie" open on Wednesday at the Steinberg Center for Theatre. Judith Ivey is a marvelous Amanda — at once a belle and a pit bull — and director Gordon Edelstein has devised a fresh and satisfying way to stage the play.

For all of its delicate charm, "The Glass Menagerie" is a pensive family story that concludes sadly as wannabe writer Tom abandons his frustrated mother Amanda and crippled sister Laura.

What Edelstein does is subtly foster a happy ending by underlining the triumph of a playwright able to create art from his sorrows.

Rather than open directly upon the Wingfield family's shabby apartment in St. Louis, the director locates Tom in a large, sparsely furnished hotel room. He enters, pours a drink, drops the needle on a record, ponders awhile his memories and then starts clattering at his portable typewriter. Soon Tom begins to read his manuscript aloud and Amanda walks into view, fondly nagging about his eating habits.

As the tale unfolds within this context, Tom is depicted as furtively scribbling in the background while Amanda chatters away to Laura about all those gentleman callers. When Amanda angrily confronts Tom about his furtive habits ("I think you've been doing things that you're ashamed of") you fear she'll get her mitts on his writing. The conclusion sees Tom back in his hotel, speaking the final lines of his now-completed work.

So, yes, life can be hard, but sometimes a masterpiece can be forged from it.

With its transparent purple wallpaper and plain furniture, the hotel room easily dissolves into the family abode, thanks to Michael Yeargan's set and Jennifer Tipton's lighting. The candlelit haze and shadows for the intimate scene between the visitor Jim and Laura looks particularly exquisite. Martin Pakledinaz dresses the characters in 1930s clothes that flatter their appearance (or not) as the story dictates.

Williams' semi-autobiographical text is performed uncut, but the wistful appeal of his poetic work and the power of the acting make three hours fly by. A squat, homely figure with grayed strawberry-blond hair and a pink face, Ivey's lively Amanda is an animated mix of middle-aged desperation and practiced girlish mannerisms that somehow suggest her background wasn't as genteel as she proclaims. Ivey believably creates a funny, frightening and blissfully deluded Amanda as you'll ever hope to see.

Usually an introspective Tom who displays a tight bond with his sister, Patch Darragh effectively bursts into furious eruptions of fancy. Portraying a painfully tremulous, sober-faced Laura with an ugly limp and a sweet voice, Keira Keeley assumes a fleeting glow when she basks in the genuine warmth of Michael Mosley's gleaming, gentlemanly Jim.

A co-production with Long Wharf Theatre, this Roundabout Theatre Company attraction might well be imported later to London so the know-it-all Brits can see how Williams' stuff should be staged. Oh, and in case you are unaware of how things turned out in real life, once all of those royalties for "The Glass Menagerie" began to roll in, Williams took very good care of his mother and sister.

"The Glass Menagerie" continues through May 30 at the Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., New York. Call (212) 719-1300 or visit www.roundabouttheatre.org.