Tennessee Williams THE GLASS MENAGERIE is like a perfectly composed music score. This is the way I, and no doubt others, experience it. With a good conductor and orchestra, as is the case with this Ensemble production, one is in for a good, albeit, sad night.
Williams memory play, as he calls it, tells the story of the struggling southern (American) Wingfield family, comprising mother Amanda, her two adult children, the older son Tom and the younger daughter Laura, and Jim, a gentleman caller, who Tom invites to the house for dinner and to meet Laura.
We soon work out the situation. Amanda brought up Tom and Laura without her husband who abandoned the family when the kids were small. Amanda is still the stay at home mother looking after Laura who is disabled, with Tom, who works in a warehouse, being the breadwinner and looking after the two women in his life. Tom feels burdened by so much responsibility at such a young age. Most nights he takes himself off to the movies. He can’t stand to be at home. In the back of our minds we start thinking, is Tom going to be the family’s next Houdini?!
Liesel Badorrek’s direction is assured, her work with her designers anchor her production; the main feature of Grace Deacon’s period set (and costumes) is the face of a middle aged man, ‘drawn’ on to the middle of the set, enigmatically looking at us. He is the escapee father, and he haunts the characters, and us.
Interspersed through the play, lighting designer Verity Hampson casts longer shadow figures of characters.
Badorrek organised composers Maria Alfonsine and Damian De Boos-Smith to devise an original score for the production. Their eclectic soundtrack, a true mixture of styles, evocatively underscores and commentates on the action.
Blazey Best blazes a trail as the off the rails family matriarch. Best’s Amanda is an imposing presence; desperate to secure Laura’s futures and to keep Tom under her control. She evocatively plays the scene where she comes out to meet ‘the gentleman caller’ in a beautiful ballroom gown. Has Amanda got it more than a little confused in her mind? Why is she doing the courting, the flirting?!
Danny Ball is memorable as Tom; conveying his characters’ increasing tension as he paces the cage. Williams gives all the best lines to Tom, and Ball delivers them eloquently.
Bridie McKim is compelling as the fragile Laura who is every bit as breakable as the glass figures she holds.
Tom Rodgers is the genial, clean cut, well dressed gentleman caller, Jim. He is an ordinary guy who thought that his friend was just inviting him over for a pleasant family dinner..
More than a few people were wiping back tears leaving the theatre. To be expected. It is Williams, after all.
Tennessee Williams THE GLASS MENAGERIE , as directed by Liesel Badorrek, is playing the Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli until the 26th April 2025.
Production photography by Prudence Upton.
https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the-glass-menagerie/
