Reviews 2005
Reviews 2005
✭✭✩✩✩
by Tennessee Williams, directed by Chris Abraham
CanStage, Berkeley Street Theatre, Toronto
January 13-February 26, 2005
“A Menagerie to Forget”
I have always thought CanStage should add a classic play to its annual mix. The revival of Tennessee William’s “The Glass Menagerie” for its 60th anniversary would seem to be a good idea, especially with a fine cast led by an innovative director like Chris Abraham. Sadly, Abraham has outsmarted himself here and turned a play that is simple and affecting to one that is overly complex and affected. The production originated at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal in 2002. Who knows what possessed the people at CanStage to bring so misguided a projection to Toronto.
One main problem is evident when you walk into the auditorium of the downstairs Berkeley Street Theatre. All “The Glass Menagerie” needs for a set is a single room that doubles as a parlour and dining-room and the landing of a outdoor stairway. Instead of this, set designers Guido Tondino and Victoria Zimski have used every inch of the long Berkeley Street Theatre stage. We see not only the Wingfield’s parlour, but a separate dining-room with sideboard behind it, Amanda’s bedroom upstage right with a worktable downstage right, a kitchen upstage left with the landing downstage left, a large table covered with shoes (representing, I suppose Tom’s place of work), and the metal stairs (part of the building itself) where Jim, the Gentleman Caller sits throughout the first act.
Thus, we have an atmosphere of spaciousness not claustrophobia. The Wingfield residence is so big that the physical and psychological need to escape whether to the movies as Tom does or into a private world as Laura does is undermined. Rather than concentrating the action and its impact, the set dissipates it. Abraham has obviously attempted to institute some of Brecht’s alienation techniques by taking the set all the way to the actual brick back and side and side walls of the building, but in so doing he has not reckoned with the acoustics of the hall. Without the walls of a set to reflect the sound at Berkeley Street, it floats straight upward. In particular, virtually none of the scenes played near the upstage back wall, like Amanda’s attempts to sell subscriptions or the various dining scenes, can be understood due to interfering echo patterns. When Amanda and Tom have their major dust-up in Act 1, all we can tell is that they’re angry--we can’t actually hear the words they are saying. Add to this the fact that the volume level of the recordings played on the gramophone are too high and that Abraham has violinist Rick Hyslop play during numerous speeches and much of the text goes missing.
This would be bad enough, but Abraham has also misdirected the central characters. “The play is memory”, says Tom Wingfield, who narrates and acts as a character in the play. Well, not here. Abrahams has directed Damien Atkins as Tom to be not someone who is a neutral stage manager and set dresser, which he does all too slowly, but as someone destroyed by the memory of what he has done to his family. This makes sense given the play’s ending, but it does not make sense that Tom should remain in the same soul-destroyed mood in the scenes of the past he is recalling. Abraham has Atkins play Tom’s present self all throughout the play. Not only does this eliminate the contrast between Tom our narrator and Tom as he was before, but it flattens the tone of the whole work, destroying the comedy that should exist in the early scenes by infusing them with Tom’s later dread and anxiety. Atkins does maintain Tom’s overwrought state, though not his Southern accent, for the length of the play, but I’m sure he would appreciate the chance to display more variety. He is very good at suggesting that Tom’s frequent “movie-going” hides much more that he could ever admit in the 1930s.
By suppressing the warmth and love that should be present in the Wingfield home, Abraham makes it hard to understand why Tom so regrets leaving it behind. Since Abraham, contrary to the text, is presenting Tom’s memories suffused with sentiment, he shows us Tom’s mother and sister in a critical rather than a sympathetic light. Rosemary Dunsmore, who would otherwise make an wonderful Amanda, is here very much like the screeching witch Tom calls her in anger. None of the tragicomedy comes out of a Southern belle trying to act according to an antique code of behaviour that her present world cares about.
Laura, Tom’s sister, fares even worse. She is crippled and pathologically shy, but to that Abraham adds another impediment. He has Michelle Monteith speak all her lines in a grating monotonous if Laura also has a mental deficit that affects her speech. This does make Laura an even more pathetic creature than usual, but it also makes Amanda’s hopes for her and, worse, Jim’s speeches to her about self-confidence, seem deluded. It naturally also prevent Monteith from giving any nuance to her character. Only Seann Gallagher as Jim escapes Abraham’s revisionism and gives a fine, compassionate, multilayered performance.
Barbara Rowe’s costumes capture the period flavour of the piece and her Southern gown for Amanda clearly shows a woman at least a generation behind the times. Abraham demands both naturalistic and non-naturalist lighting, at both of which Luc Prairie is adept, often separating characters in squares of bright white light. Rick Hyslop’s mournful live music is pleasant enough, but is largely unnecessary, especially when it overlaps the recorded music.
It’s sad to see talented actors trapped in so ill-conceived a production and playing in a venue where half their words go unheard. Where is the quality control at CanStage? Why did no one step in and at least solve the sound problems before the show opened? “The Glass Menagerie” is a much-loved memory play, but this is a unlovable production most people will want to forget.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Rosemary Dunsmore and Damien Atkins. ©2005 Lucas Oleniuk.
2005-01-18
The Glass Menagerie