Review by Sam Waite
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The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield tells us in his opening monologue, is a memory play. In fact, the term “memory play” was coined by Tennessee Williams to describe The Glass Menagerie, the play which would catapult him to enduring fame and success. Told deliberately as a memory of events rather than their real-time occurrence, this same monologue allows that things may not be strictly accurate in Tom’s remembrance, and introduces memory-inspired touches retained in many productions – the muted lighting, events seeming to happen to music, a sense of general confusion.
Williams’ play finds Tom looking back on his early adulthood, where he lived in his childhood home with elder sister Laura and faded southern belle mother Amanda Wingfield. Long since abandoned by the family patriarch, the trio get by on Tom’s warehouse salary, and Amanda’s desires are torn between reliving her glory days (17 gentleman callers on a single afternoon!) and hoping for her children to reach loftier heights. Laura, disabled by a childhood illness and sickly for much of her youth, dropped out of both high school and a business college, her painful shyness and fixation only on her collection of glass figures and her father’s old records meaning no gentlemen have yet to come knocking for her.
Last seen in London at the Duke of York’s Theatre, where Jeremy Herrin directed six-time Academy Award nominee Amy Adams in her West End debut, Jay Miller’s production strays further afield as the final production at the Yard Theatre, soon to be rebuilt on its original site. Despite having more than 500 seats fewer (the capacity is to be doubled with the new construction) the Yard allows for a much more sizeable playing space, which allows Miller a great deal of freedom to play with the movement and purposeful disjointedness of his work, and for Cécile Trémolières to extend the set design. Miller does a fine job of bringing together his endless array of ideas, but at times it can all be a bit much – yes, memory is disconnected and hard to follow, but at times time spent questioning why they stand behind one another when supposedly at the dining table, or why narrator-Tom is airbrushing the walls with blue paint, is better spent focusing on the work being done elsewhere.
Following in the footsteps of not only Adams, but the likes of Sally Field, Jessica Lange and Helen Hayes, Sharon Small makes for a powerful Amanda Wingfield. Bringing a sense of urgency and a depth of emotion even to scenes where Amanda repeats old dialogue word for word, Small creates a deeply torn character and finds the right blend of self-centred reminiscence and genuine hope that both children move on to a better future. In a small but very skilled cast, Small proves to be the most consistent player, bringing a tremendous range and a sense of ferocity to the role.
The Wingfield home is shown only in part, the sofa on which Laura will eventually collapse with anxiety, three suspended shelves housing her titular glass collection, and a wardrobe stood imposingly over the scene. What lurks behind the sofa is not unlike the set for Jamie Lloyd’s Tempest revival, with a mound of stone and debris piled stage-right – the remains, it seems, of Tom’s childhood home, whether he is literally exploring its decimated ruins, or his remembered version is so fractured that it takes on this atmospheric tone in his mind. Admittedly out there as depictions go, thematically weighty but visually light on clear details, credit must go to Trémolières for such arresting, immediately intriguing vision.
As both narrator of and participant in The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield is carefully portrayed by Tom Varey, exploring the fraught set with a headlamp and microphone. Upon disabling the handheld mic, his quietly affection, emotionally blunted narration gives way to his work as the character’s remembered self. Then he is effective in showing a world-weariness unearned by a less-than-eventful life, and an unending frustration which makes instant sense of his frequent spats with Amanda. His clear devotion to his elder sister is also apparent, making it easy to believe when he agrees to bring a friend home to meet her, introducing Jad Sayegh’s gentleman caller for the second act. Sayegh is charming as Jim, and his chemistry with Eva Morgan’s Laura makes the ending (this being Tennessee Williams) all the more heart-breaking.
Jordan Sherman provides costume design for this production, adding to the jumble of eras which help sell the oft-warped “memory” aspect of the play, as well as touches of camp and old-fashionedness that add to the text. When Amanda beams to her daughter that she has never and may never looked better, the laughter from the press night crowd suggested we were largely in agreement that Amanda’s taste may not be the best. Likewise, the gaudy gold embellishments of Amanda’s own dress make her own pseudo-flirtations with Jim even more desperate and depressing to behold. Setting the suitably dreary scene, lighting designer Sarah Readman has perfectly captured the muted, muddy view of the memory play, though the use of the headlamp did prove uncomfortable when faced towards the audience – the extended, candlelit scene between Laura and Jim in act two, however, benefitted beautifully from the candles’ ever-so-careful placement across the set.
Laura Wingfield can feel incredibly secondary to The Glass Menagerie’s first act, and tragically that is no different here. Her shyness and fear of exposing herself more fully to the world serves mostly to enhance the dynamics of her mother and brother, and it is not until act two that the character has much agency of her own. In that second act, Eva Morgan proves utterly triumphant in staking her own place in the audience’s collective memory, allowing herself to fully excavate the charms and wit behind the part. Making her professional debut, Morgan is so utterly arresting in the latter act that her being side-lined in the former makes a warped kind of sense – with such a powerful performance ready to spring forth, of course this version of Laura is finally free of the background she’s allowed herself to be pushed into, beautifully complimenting Small’s brazen, continually vocal Amanda.
The final touch shaping Morgan’s performance is a subtle, often imperceptible limb, aided by movement director Sung Im Her. Laura, we learn from Jim’s take on their high school classes together, was never as obstructive or attention-pulling as she seemed to think, and so it makes perfect sense that her disability would be so easy to miss, her own feelings of inferiority far more of an obstacle for her. Dominique Hamilton, behind the wigs, hair and makeup for the production, has created such an undeniably pretty look for the character, that it quickly becomes all-too-apparent that she ought to have had no trouble making friends, were she not so scared to try.
Completing the atmospheric production are sound design from Josh Anio Grigg, an occasionally over-loud blend of remixed modern songs and original composition, and illusion designer Edward Hilsum. Where Grigg’s work can occasionally lean into the too-muchness that comes with Miller’s bombast of ideas, it does blend magnificently with Hildum’s illusions, which create two visually stunning moments in which characters seem to teleport across and around the stage. If you’re familiar with The Glass Menagerie, you will know immediately why Amanda Wingfield appearing seemingly from nowhere about the stage while calling up subscribers is a delightful touch, and if you aren’t, you’re in for a treat.
Imperfect but powerful, this Glass Menagerie is a fantastic depiction of its central figures. With fine performances across the board and the work all-around utterly top notch, it’s only when they combine that things can get a bit hard to follow – though, I suppose, with a memory play that is perhaps on purpose. A last hurrah for a wonderful venue, this first and final visit for myself gives me great hope that the Yard’s stellar work will continue once their New Yard construction is completed.
The Glass Menagerie plays at The Yard Theatre until May 10th
For tickets and information visit https://www.theyardtheatre.co.uk/events/the-glass-menagerie
Photos by Manuel Harlan