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Tuesday July 12, 2022
The Glass Menagerie
An interesting production of this play. The character of Tom is played by two actors - one is the young, brash, and pretty resentful Tom in the timeline of the story, and the other is the older, cynical, tortured (and perhaps unsuccessful), writer Tom who acts as narrator, played brilliantly, I felt, by Paul Hilton. I'm not sure if this was how it was originally intended, but overall I think it worked well as a construct - the way the story is told, in itself, separates the characters.
As to the other aspects of the staging, I am little more lukewarm. The set is spacious, without any borders, which is a little contrary to the intimate nature of the play; I was uncomfortable with it. The most intimate scene was created by an excellent lighting design for the blackout and candlelight - which was a necessity given the set. But by far the most peculiar aspect was the menagerie itself - which was HUGE. I can see it was allegorical; however, to me, Laura's precious and slightly broken unicorn is sufficient as the real allegory, and not her collection. I always imagined the menagerie to be in a rather small cabinet in keeping with their life of relative poverty, and only large in its importance to Laura; I don't think it needs to be physically large and looming to convey this.
Posted by Christina at 11:53 AM. Category: Art and Culture
