Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie

"pitch-perfect casting"
Robert Reid, The Record

Written by Tennessee Williams, featuring Patricia Yeatman, Eric Woolfe, Brad Loucks and Melissa Good in the cast. The production was directed and designed by Douglas Beattie with lighting by Renée Brode. Joy M. Swain was the stage manager, assisted by Merin Smith.

The Glass Menagerie ran for 9 performances, February 14 - 22, 2003

Synopsis
Tom is both narrator and character in his own play. He takes us to an alley in St. Louis in 1936 when he is in his twenties and living in a crowded apartment with his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Tom hates his warehouse job and takes refuge in poetry writing and constant trips to the movies. Laura spends her days listening to records her father left behind when he abandoned the family and caring for tiny animal figurines made of glass. Amanda frets about her children's future and, having failed in a bid to get Laura through business school, enlists Tom's aid in finding her a suitable husband. Tom invites Jim O'Connor, a boy he knows from the warehouse, home for dinner. By a strange coincidence Jim turns out to be the one boy Laura had a secret crush on at high school. On the night of his visit Laura is panic-stricken at first, but Jim's charm manages to calm her, and, left alone for a time, the two strike a tender spark between them. However it's all too late; unbeknownst to Tom, Jim is already engaged to someone else. Tom flees the apartment as his father did years before. As narrator he begs Laura to release him from the burden of guilt he has carried ever since. "Blow out your candles, Laura... And so -- goodbye!”

From Touchmark's Press Release dated January 14, 2003:
The cast for The Glass Menagerie includes three faces familiar to Touchmark audiences from previous productions: Patricia Yeatman who last appeared in Touchmark's reading of Blessings in Disguise returns to play Amanda Wingfield, and Toronto actors, Eric Woolfe (last seen in Kingdom of Earth) and Melissa Good (last seen in The Playboy of the Western World), will be back as her children, Tom and Laura. They'll be joined by Saskatoon actor Brad Loucks as Jim, the Gentleman Caller. Joy M. Swain will stage manage, assisted by Merin Smith, and Touchmark's Producing Artistic Director Douglas Beattie will direct, assisted by Stratford company member Marc Bondy. Renée Brode will do her third lighting design for the company.

Playwright
Regarded by many as America’s pre-eminent playwright, Thomas Lanier Williams (1911 - 1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi. He was the son of a travelling salesman, later Sales Manager for the International Shoe Company. The promotion necessitated the family’s move to St. Louis in 1919. Tom’s parents were both of Southern stock. Cornelius was a coarse, domineering man; Edwina by contrast was gentle and puritanical. The marriage was not happy. Edwina lavished the affection she was unable to bestow on her husband on Tom and his sister Rose. The children were each other’s principal playmates and an unusually close bond grew between them. They had trouble adjusting to life in St. Louis as did Cornelius who, in management for the shoe company, had to give up his life on the road which he vastly preferred. The family moved from apartment to apartment around the city, one of which provided the inspiration for the set of The Glass Menagerie. Tom graduated from high school in 1929 and began studying journalism at the University of Missouri, but his academic career soon began to flounder. His father refused to support his education any further and in 1932, one of the worst years of The Great Depression, got him a job in the shoe company’s warehouse (the “cellotex interior” of the play). To make matters worse, as she matured physically, Rose was unable to make the necessary emotional adjustments and became increasingly withdrawn. She was eventually institutionalized as an adult. Tom’s hatred of his job at the warehouse and his alienation from Rose drove him to find refuge in the countless movies he attended and in his writing. He was a compulsive and prolific writer from an early age, first as a poet, then, starting in 1935, as a playwright. He changed his name officially to Tennessee in his mid-twenties (he was proud of distinguished Tennessee ancestors on his father’s side.) The Glass Menagerie (1944) was his first major success. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize twice, for A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Other well known Williams titles include Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) and The Night of the Iguana (1961). His lesser known play, Kingdom of Earth (1968), was Touchmark Theatre’s inaugural production in 1999.

Director's Notes
"The play is memory." Some of our memories are treasured, some discarded. Some are barely remembered, others, "improved" to suit us. Painful memories, like Tom's memory of Laura's shattered hopes, even seem to chase and pursue. This play answers the playwright's need to turn and face his own pursuer. In every performance Tom pleads with Laura to blow her candles out. Will it happen this time? Will she release him? Or will the night be hers?

The Glass Menagerie was first produced by Eddie Dowling and Louis J. Singer at the Civic Theatre in Chicago, December 26, 1944. Touchmark's production used the Dramatists Play Service "acting edition" with a few elements of the "reading edition" published by Random House and New Directions.

Reviews
Beattie... takes every opportunity to remind us of the play's autobiographical subtext. And the production benefits enormously as a result... Woolfe (as Tom) does a superb job evoking Williams, not so much the actual man as his essence... Then there's Woolfe's uncanny sleight-of-hand skill, which is not only effective in itself as stage craft, but underscores the play's theme of truth pleasantly disguised as illusion... The same attention to detail is provided by Melissa Good as Tom's sister Laura, a young woman more emotionally crippled than physically disabled... Good has more in mind than appealing to our compassion. Her Laura is both more complex and more infuriating... Patricia Yeatman (Amanda) sidesteps cliche and gives us a woman bewildered by life, but not defeated... Beattie's pitch-perfect casting extends to Brad Loucks as Jim, a high school comet with a short tail.
Robert Reid, Kitchener-Waterloo Record
... a fine production... stirring performance... Woolfe relishes the language, savouring the witty and intellectual observations that roll out of Tom's mouth... Patricia Yeatman has brilliant moments... (her) transformation into the giggling coquette entertaining her daughter's gentleman caller in the second act is superb... Melissa Good as Laura... is sweet and vulnerable, with a subtle foreshadowing of the emotional frailty that truly cripples her... She tries desperately to please her mother, and when she recognizes that the gentleman caller is her chance for happiness, she bravely risks everything. Good's slow realization of the consequences of that risk is haunting... The much anticipated gentleman caller is portrayed with charm and good-natured humour by Brad Loucks... In their "courtship scene", Loucks and Good are absolutely delightful... Appropriate for a memory play, Beattie's apartment setting is grey and indistinct, with only the characters and important elements high-lighted by Renée Brode's hazy and evocative lighting... as in our own memories, we are allowed to focus on the essence of Williams' highly autobiographical tale.
Bill Penner, The Guelph Mercury
"Through a Glass Darkly" (title) With Touchmark's powerful production of The Glass Menagerie, director Douglas Beattie leaves behind the comedy of Dan Needles' Canadian Wingfields for the tragedy of Tennessee Williams' American Wingfields... For too many productions Tom's words (The play is memory) become an excuse for an exercise in nostalgia. What Beattie makes clear from the outset is that Tom's memories of the mother and sister he has abandoned... are tinged with pain and haunt him without respite... Beattie physically signals this darker, less comfortable vision of the play through his design. The otherwise realistic set depicting the Wingfields' miserable apartment is completely shaded in charcoal with only some furniture and clothing providing colour. Even before Tom's failure to pay the electric light bill plunges the apartment in darkness, Renée Brode's masterful lighting has emphasized coldness and shadows. As a director Beattie eschews sentimentality. He also views the work as an ensemble piece, not the star vehicle as it is usually presented. The result is that for the first time in my experience the Wingfields seem like a real family with deep-seated complaints and fears, not like a trio of actors thrust on stage together. This deepens the effect of the whole play since showing the strength of their unseverable bonds makes the tragedy of one the tragedy of all. As Tom, the narrator, Eric Woolfe gives the sense that he replays this key incident in his past not out of choice but from inner necessity... Within the action Woolfe carefully depicts the increasing severity of Tom's inner struggle between duty to his family and desire for his own freedom. Patricia Yeatman is superb as Amanda... Unlike other Amandas who are made to seem naturally optimistic, Yeatman shows that Amanda now has to force herself to be optimistic about the future because the only alternative is despair. When Amanda adopts her Southern belle pose for the dinner party, Yeatman makes us cringe with pity... Like the others Melissa Good avoids the sentimentality often emphasized in the role (of Laura)... The distracted look, childlike voice, sudden changes of expression and her disproportionate fears show us from the beginning that this is not simply a delicate flower but a woman with severe problems. The kindness that the "gentlman caller" Jim shows her might seem to bring her to a state of normality, but when Laura's confidence allows her to show Jim her menagerie, Good chillingly shows us that Laura's obsession, far from quaint, verges on madness... Loucks, too, shows his character in a different light... Here, Beattie picks up the fact that Jim's fiancee is a "home girl" like Laura and makes Jim's attraction to Laura real. Holding out the possibility that in other circumstances Amanda's scheme might have worked makes both Amanda look less foolish and the tragedy more biting... Four excellent performances and Beattie's detailed, insightful direction make Williams' classic a compelling experience. How lucky Guelph is to have Touchmark call it home.
Christopher Hoile, Stage Door
Absolutely, Positively, 5 Stars, Two Thumbs Up, Heartfelt Emotion, Standing Ovation Performance. If you plan on seeing only one performance this year, this is it!
Scott Cameron, Guelph