I saw the production last night and came away deeply affected. It’s the first production of Glass Menagerie I’ve seen, which, judging from the reviews here, seems to be a good thing (or at least made for a much more satisfying night). Ultimately I think the production doesn’t work for a Broadway theatre, and at times felt like an experiment you might do for a workshop or school assignment…except with a killer cast. I agree with a lot of what Jesse Green wrote in his review, both the positives and negatives, but that last image of Mantello, bitter and weary and physically so far from his family, won’t leave my mind.
I understand the gripes here about how Gold treats the script, and if I came into the production with any familiarity with the play, I imagine I would have a similar reaction. It took some time for those moments when the staging blatantly contradicts the text to not distract from what was actually happening, but Gold makes his intentions very clear in that opening meal scene, and after a while the incongruities didn’t matter so much. What stayed with me is the story of a family that can’t save itself, and how that impending dissolution leads each of them to cope in an intense way that inevitably clashes with the other two. Field’s character made sense to me; she can be completely horrible, but in a way that’s always rooted in a very real, consuming desperation. As someone else wrote here, she’s a woman who starts the show at the end of her rope, and we see what tiny bit she has left run out by the end. I do agree that Mantello seems too old for Tom, but for me it paid off in the end. I found it striking how he doesn’t see the whole thing with sorrow, but with anger and bitterness, like he hates himself for telling us about this memory, for not being able to forget the whole thing and move on without this burden.
I still haven’t figured out how I feel about casting Ferris as Laura, which I know is one of the major sticking points. It really didn’t bother me, because I read it as Green described it in his review – that Laura is the most level-headed and resigned about the whole situation, which makes for an interesting contrast between her and the other two Wingfield’s. What all this means is that in the end, even though Jim’s inevitable departure is devastating for Amanda, it felt more of a hopeful thing for Laura, a brief moment of normalcy. And for me that’s where the production became the most problematic, because that’s clearly not what Tom’s memory is meant to be.
I always appreciate simple design if it serves to tighten and intensify a play's focus, but this stage is just too big for the "set" to be what it was. There's no sense of physical claustrophobia, which is a problem when Tom's whole issue is that he's being suffocated by his surroundings. I didn't need a period-appropriate set, but a set that contributed to the sense of ratcheting tension would have been appreciated. And the decision to have all that rain just made no sense to me; there were multiple times I just felt bad thinking about how wet the actors were getting sitting in all that water.
All that to say, a day later I’m still mulling over the play, and that’s never a bad thing. So if you haven’t seen a production of The Glass Menagerie yet, you may very well find it worth it. I’ve also found the discussion here very interesting, though I’m sorry it’s been such a bad experience for so many. After reading all these comments, I do wish I had seen the John Tiffany production.
So, in case you missed it:
