In the intimate Center Stage Theater last weekend, John Blondell’s Lit Moon Theatre Co. presented a small but mighty production of Tennessee Williams’ seminal play The Glass Menagerie.
The show opens with a young woman on the floor wrapped around a shoebox.
Three characters in generic daywear add two tables and 20 wooden folding chairs to the stage to the strains of Paul Simon’s “The Only Living Boy in New York”: “Half of the time we’re gone / But we don’t know where … Tom, get your plane right on time / I know you’ve been eager to fly now.”
The first act is dominated by The Mother, Amanda, played with fervor, wit and constancy by Lit Moon pillar Victoria Finlayson, against the foil of The Son, Tom, also the sometime narrator, played by Stan Hoffman, a recognizable 30-year staple in local theater.
Hoffman, an agile performer who appears to be the oldest actor onstage, is cast as the youngest. Though intentional, it was confusing to watch an actor who looks like a father portray a son.
Amanda nags and strives, and analyzes and directs. Tom complains and avoids, and drinks.
Portrayed subtly and potently by newcomer Anna Telfer, The Daughter, Laura, scooches and is dragged around on the floor. She often resides under a table and fusses with her glass menagerie, a box of figures she notes “takes up a lot of time. Glass requires a lot of care.”
Set in the 1940s, The Glass Menagerie captures a country deep in the Great Depression, an abandoned alcoholic family and a pair of young adult children, each disabled in some way — because “We don’t say that word” (crippled) and “We don’t say that word” (peculiar) — facing hopelessness.
Hope arrives in the form of The Gentlemen Caller, Jim, played earnestly and sensitively by Chris Wagstaffe, who served in act one as a silent stage manager seated behind a laptop at the back of the stage.
By coincidence, he turns out to be a boy Laura remembers fondly.
He, too, drags her across the floor by her feet, but as they converse, she emerges from her cognitive and physical confinement for the first time. Protracted anticipation of a first kiss feels luxuriously uplifting.
During the course of the play, the chairs are rearranged as part of the action to depict imprisonment, optimism, rigidity, and commentary on life as theater.
A varied, mostly classical music score captures mood and emotion, from Erik Satie’s gentle “Gymnopédie No. 1” and Camille Saint-Saens’ evocative “The Swan” to solo piano works.
Many of us read The Glass Menagerie in high school, and the audience was at least half composed of college students. But I think the production moves most deeply those of us who’ve had more time to see and reflect on how people perpetuate their own suffering, and how one missed chance or grab for a brass ring can define an entire life. That, and how global economic shifts can indelibly mark entire generations.
We’ll have several chances to partake of Lit Moon’s unique and dynamic productions. Next up will be Humbug: A (Lit Moon) Christmas Carol running Dec. 21-23. In celebration of their 25th (plus one) anniversary season, company members will perform Ibsen’s A Doll House on Jan. 4. The following day, 43 company actors from past and present will perform Steven Dietz’s The Nina Variations, 43 riffs on a famous scene in Chekhov’s The Seagull.
Based on what I saw last Friday, I want to see them all.
— Noozhawk contributor and local arts critic Judith Smith-Meyer is a round-the-clock appreciator of the creative act. She can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. The opinions expressed are her own.