'The Glass Menagerie' : 'a deeply intimate, affecting piece of drama' *****

The Falstaff Society's recent production of Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie' was simply exquisite. 'The Glass Menagerie' tells the story of Amanda Wingfield, a faded Southern belle, and her two 'dysfunctional' children, who struggle to get by after being abandoned by their father. Tom works at a warehouse by day, but is a poet at heart; he craves adventure and excitement, which he attempts to inject into his stultifying daily routine through incessant late-night trips to the movie theatre. Laura, crippled by a childhood illness, has an 'inferiority complex', and concurrently actively excludes herself from society, choosing to remain indoors and play old phonograph records and cultivate her 'Glass Menagerie': a collection of tiny glass animals. 

Performed in the Alma Tavern, a small, intimate location, the set was sparse; however, as the action unfolded the sparsity of the set became fundamental, offsetting the passion of the action, and the poetry of Tom's soliloquies. 

Ed Phillips embodied Tom perfectly, combining wry humour with a subtle, attractive American twang. He accurately portrays the frustration of a creative man confined by the harsh necessity of reality, in thrall to the invisible, yet un-ignorable social maxims of the sanctity of 'duty' and 'family'; his wistful speeches convey a fervent longing for adventure and titillation, superseding the stultifying drudgery of everyday life. Phillips commanded the stage beautifully, confidently projecting his voice during his soliloquies, and conveying similar strength when interacting with the other characters; Tom's exchanges with his mother were particularly compelling, presenting the tension between old-world convention and new American optimism, paling authority and aspirational youth.  

Letty Thomas as Amanda was similarly wonderfully cast. 'The Glass Menagerie' thrives as much on what does not happen as what does; Amanda's nostalgic, fragmented memories of her long-passed girlhood - the 'seventeen Gentlemen callers' at her door, the accommodating slaves, the 'Southern hospitality' - conveyed a longing which uncannily parallels that of her sons: while Tom hungers for a rich, vibrant future, she struggles to cling to a hazy simulacrum of former glory. 

Laura is an complex, inexplicable entity. Alice Kirk did a fabulous job of subtly communicating both the physical defects, and the debilitating internal monsters which plague Laura's life, inhibiting her potential to flourish. Her strange idiosyncrasy of obsessively playing with and humanizing her glass ornament collection is another mutation of the desperate longing that hampers her mother and brother; projecting one's affections onto inanimate objects is simply another form of escapism - like going to the movie theatre, or obsessing over gentlemen callers - only this escape is to the internal recesses of the imagination. 

Oliver Bahbout as 'freckles' or Jim O'Connor, burst onto the scene with incongruous optimism. Bahbout excellently injected a typically, undeniably American positivism that harshly jarred with the sensitive, delicate internal struggles we had seen develop so fully in each of the characters throughout the first half of the play. His scene with Laura really was a fascinating, compelling piece of drama; it presented the clash of the introvert and extrovert, the pessimist and optimist, the socially-stunted and the socially-inflated persona. 'Freckles' moralizing seemed - as it should seem - like a violation of Laura's individuality, and I strangely found myself willing her to resist his advances and his pompous assumption that 'public speaking' is the future of America: I wished her to be free from her private demons, but not via the methods O'Connor proposes. 

'The Glass Menagerie' was a deeply intimate, affecting piece of drama, presenting a wonderfully intricate spectrum of interweaving, inter-lapping, yet entirely distinct psychologies. In a play of only four characters, each could have an entire two hours devoted to their particular stories, and still keep an audience wholly in rapture. 

Particular credit must go to the play's directors, Maureen Lennon and Theo Scholefield, who excellently transformed the raw material of Williams's already rich script into an unforgettable theatrical performance, with undeniable skill and economy. 

Undoubtedly a five star production. *****

''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.'' (1.1, Tom).