Wednesday, October 20, 1999
Playhouse version of 'Glass Menagerie' reflects the new
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ever since Playhouse in the Park announced The Glass Menagerie as part of its 1999-2000 season, there have been two reactions: “It's my favorite play!” or “I've seen it.”
The second sentiment sends Charles Towers off on a philosophical rip. He's Playhouse associate artistic director and the man staging the Menagerie revival.
“It's amazing. Nobody questions opera. You go to see who's singing Carmen, who's staging Traviata. Why do we think once we've seen a 20th-century classic we've seen it? Why don't we think the depth is there to re-explore it?” Menagerie opens Thursday in the Marx Theatre.
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IF YOU GO
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• What: The Glass Menagerie.
• When: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 19.
• Where: Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park.
• Tickets: $27.50-$39.50. Tonight's preview $24.50. Any unreserved tickets are half-price day of show at the Playhouse box office or the PNC Bank Tower Tix booth 11 a.m.-5 p.m. 421-3888.
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Mr. Towers, is one of those fans-follow-him-anywhere directors. His resonating Playhouse work includes Nixon's Nixon, Valley Song, The Woman in Black and How I Learned to Drive.
He points out that Playhouse's ever-rising reputation is attracting better and better actors to its stages (including Broadway stage and screen veteran Roberta Maxwell as faded Southern belle Amanda Wingfield). “I'm betting people going to see Menagerie will be seeing it for the first time ever, and that includes people who've seen it.”
This production will return to Tennessee Williams' original text, which didn't make it intact to the original Broadway production.
It's a harder-edged, more poetic version of the saga of the Wingfield family and Amanda's reign of terror over restless son Tom and physically and emotionally damaged daughter Laura. It's Amanda's pursuit of a Gentleman Caller for Laura that Tom tells as a memory long-past.
The original Menagerie is from the 1940s, Mr. Towers points out. He guesses that “at the time the actors were uncomfortable with what (Williams) had written” preferring more natural dialogue. Hence the softer-edged, less poetic produced (and published) version.
Tennessee Williams is defined as a poet of the theater, yet Mr. Towers argues that Williams was “a great political writer. His work is gutsy. He was always willing to take on all sorts of themes. He was ahead of his time in what he wanted to dig into — the family, man against his God.
“His understanding of the American character particularly as it relates to money — and the absence of money — is remarkable. America is money. What's Amanda's motivation if it isn't money, the lack of money? Her husband is long-gone, she has to support her family.”
What Williams wrote in The Glass Menagerie is regarded by many scholars, critics and fans as a perfect play.
“Go and see a diva sing an aria,” Mr. Towers says, “and come and see these actors say this play.”
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