The appearance of truth
The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams
directed by Chris Abraham
Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts
The Glass Menagerie was Tennessee Williams breakthrough success, and he lays out the story for the audience from the start: "The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to happen to music. That explains the fiddle in the wings."
And the rest of the story, as Williams notes, explains itself. Moving from action to paused asides, Tom, the narrator/actor introduces the play and stops to comment upon it from time to time.
Rosemary Dunsmore (who was so wonderful in the Centaur production of Wit last year) plays Amanda Wingfield, the suffocating mother of two grown children, all living together in a cramped apartment. She spends her days living in memories—real or imagined—of the South and of her place in its society.
While Dunsmore is a force of nature on stage, her rendition as the Southern matron is a bit of a weird, but highly energetic, read. She has only a tenuous grasp on the accent, and while we don't believe for a moment that this belle is of the South, Dunsmore was still lovely to watch. She nags Tom about advancing in his work and obsesses over her "crippled" daughter, fearing she'll have no chance to find a husband, or even to entertain any "gentlemen callers".
Tom (Damien Atkins) is the narrator of the piece. He's the dutiful son, working in the warehouse of a shoe factory and longing to escape.
His sister Laura is the withdrawn, painfully shy daughter with some slight disability which causes her to walk with a limp.
Michelle Monteith as Laura Wingfield was a revelation; it's a tough job to play a shy crippled girl without milking it for pathos, but Monteith did so with marvellous restraint and poignancy. The scenes between her and Seann Gallagher made for some of the play's sweetest moments.
Appearing late in the play, Seann Gallagher's portrayal of gentleman caller Jim O'Connor struck the right notes of cocky brashness. He is the most realistic character in the play, "...an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from ... the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for."
Amanda had left home and married a "telephone man", the fifth character in the play who appears only as a spectre via a photograph hung over the mantel. This is the father who left the family long ago, last heard from in a postcard sent from Mexico with the words "Hello—Goodbye!" on it, and no address.
Guido Tondino and Victoria Zimski's set effectively creates the mood of a family living under reduced circumstances, (all the best furniture and belongings from the old home now tossed into a shabby apartment). Though helped out by Luc Prairie's careful lighting design, the set is still too large and sketchy to make the claustrophobia of these caged mice believable. Also, over a third of the stage—a bedroom—was virtually never used, yet remained there, visible, throughout.
Director Chris Abraham has tried to balance the chemistry between the cast, but the production doesn't quite gel. We're not as spellbound by it as we should be. Tom's lines at the start come to mind. His character and that of the play should be revealed as, "...the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."
See our events calendar for show times and ticket prices.
The Glass Menagerie plays until October 20 at
Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts
5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine Rd.
Montreal
Tickets/Info: (514) 739-7944
[ Photos by Lydia Pawelak. Top: Damien Atkins and Rosemary Dunsmore; bottom: Michelle Monteith ]
No day at the beach
Harry, Pierre, and René
A very good year
Fringe update the third
Montreal.com's Fringe update - part two