Photograph: Playhouse Nottingham
A claustrophobic apartment in St Louis, Missouri, is the setting for Tennessee William’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece that first debuted in Chicago in 1944. Tom Wingfield (Chris New) is the post-war narrator who reflects on the key events in his life that eventually lead him to leave his disabled sister Laura (Amy Trigg) and his domineering mother Amanda (Susannah Harker) in search of a better life.
Tom works at a warehouse and has aspirations to be a writer. He’s paid a reasonable salary but it’s not enough to compensate for the monotonous labour. The only way he is able to get through the daily grind is by constantly going to the movies each night. He’s all too aware that “Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them!” but he can’t walk out on his family because that’s what his father did. Therefore, he’s trapped in the family home by guilt. His mother, Amanda, is trapped by nostalgia, reminiscing on the time that seventeen ‘gentleman callers’ came to court her on a single afternoon. Tom’s sister, Laura, is physically trapped in a wheelchair thanks to pleurosis. Her only form of escape is playing with the glass figurines of animals from which the play takes its title.
This sense of a trapped family living on top of each other is captured on stage by juxtaposing a tiny living room next to a large fire exit stairway which looms high above the set. It’s here that Tom is free to move around as he reflects on his life, talking directly to the audience: “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am 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.”
The set is dark and quite sparse but it’s given a proper makeover after the interval when Jim O’Connor (Daniel Donskoy), a work colleague of Tom’s, is invited over to dinner. The mother is in her element, dolling herself up in clothing that veers on pantomime, and no expense is spared on décor in an attempt to impress this potential suitor for her daughter.
When the new guest arrives the play comes alive and there’s an incredible scene where there’s a sudden downpour of rain. It’s beautifully executed and quite magical, bringing with it the expectation that something may change; guilt will finally be washed away. This sets up the encounter between Jim O’Connor and Laura Wingfield which is quite mesmerising, mainly due to Daniel Donskoy’s powerful voice and stage presence and Amy Trigg’s coy but excited facial expressions.
It’s pretty impossible to mess up a Tennessee William’s play because he’s a master of dialogue, so it’s good to see that the Playhouse have done the other bits right too. In particular, a simple but clever stage design that symbolises the trapped lives of the Wingfield family adds the right atmosphere, but most important is their casting of a wheelchair user in the role of Amy. I left this play thinking how different things are today, and how disability is slowly becoming something that you no longer notice. Relevant casting is an integral part of this process.
The Glass Menagerie is at Nottingham Playhouse until Saturday 26 March 2016.
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