The Glass Menagerie: A Review

The Glass Menagerie doesn’t show up on regional stages as often as it used to, and that’s a shame. Tennessee Williams’s first masterpiece is one of the greatest plays of the last century. It’s a heart-shattering poem of desperation and regret that captures, perhaps better than any other play, the peculiarly American capacities for restlessness, self-delusion, and absurd emotional courage. Since it first appeared during World War II, it’s been revived on Broadway six times and filmed or televised at least four more. Its four astonishing characters are signature roles for actors, and it remains as fresh, fragile and disturbing today as it was in 1944.

The Winnipesaukee Playhouse’s new production is far from perfect, but still conveys much of The Glass Menagerie’s cathartic essence. Director Neil Pankhurst offers a sensitive though understated version that takes its time developing real tension but begins to pay off more and more as the play progresses. He makes skillful use of David Towlun’s shabby, claustrophobic setting, with its metal-grated alleyway entrance and half-concealed upstage dining alcove. Towlun’s one design mistake dangles overhead, where he’s hung an array of scaled-down model fire escapes that loom above the action. It’s a distracting and redundant piece of symbolism this production does not need.

Broadway veteran Carolyn Kirsch stars as Amanda Wingfield, the impossibly devoted mother at the center of The Glass Menagerie. She’s wonderful in Amanda’s delicate moments, and her illusory return to the lost elegance of her youth during the visit of the fabled Gentleman Caller lights up the stage. But she underplays Amanda’s struggle against desperation too much of the time, and the play loses energy as a result. It’s a richly interior performance, but one that doesn’t always grasp the ferocity of Amanda’s love, or her immense capacity for hope.

Adam Kee plays her son Tom, The Glass Menagerie’s narrator and protagonist. He’s got an effective sense of these two characters – the Tom who’s telling the story long after the fact and the Tom who’s trapped inside it – but he’s a little too casual with his delivery at times. He can do a better job with the devastating imagery in Williams’s dialogue. As his damaged sister Laura, Alison Weisgall is simply too strong and too confident to capture a character so emotionally maimed that she retreats into relationships with miniature glass animals. She has her moments, particularly with her mother, but the full picture of Laura’s crippled hopelessness eludes her. Something similar happens with Casey Unterman’s Gentleman Caller, although in his case the issue is tentativeness, not excessive confidence. He’s a bit too deferential in the role, both as actor and character.

In spite of all this, the Winnipesaukee Players find their balance near the end of The Glass Menagerie, as Tom’s last confrontation with his mother Amanda propels him from their fractured home and the family’s tragedy is sealed. It’s a measure of how powerful this play is that Director Pankhurst’s last image, of Laura blowing out her candles as her brother weeps quietly far away, hits as hard as it ever has. The Glass Menagerie will run at the Winnipesaukee Playhouse through August 30. If you’ve never seen it staged, here’s your chance. For NHPR News, I'm Kevin Gardner.