THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams (Soulpepper). At the Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill). To September 10. $45-$65. 416-866-8666. See listing Rating: NNNN
Like the prized glass unicorn in the title menagerie, Ted Dykstra’s moving production of Tennessee Williams’s 1944 play never shatters instead, it breaks apart quietly with little fuss. Nothing much to cry over, but that didn’t stop me from weeping into my program.
It begins and ends with Tom Wingfield (Stuart Hughes), as a kind of ironic illusionist, recalling the past long after abandoning his St. Louis family. Focusing on a short but intense winter in the Wingfield home, Tom, his overbearing mother, Amanda (Nancy Palk), and physically disabled sister, Laura (Gemma James-Smith), endure day-to-day grievances as they anticipate a visit from Jim (Jeff Lillico), the gentleman caller they hope will provide a future for the pathologically timid Laura.
Palk shines as the formerly genteel Southern belle Amanda, vacillating between flirtatious charm and an impulsive cruelty that emerges in its bitterest form in her failure to secure Jim for her vulnerable daughter.
As narrator, Hughes’s Tom seems incongruous, like a Sam Shepard stud inexplicably stuck playing house with his mother and sister. He softens in his interactions with James-Smith, who transcends any idea of Laura as a tragic pixie, emotional independence burning through her shyness.
Under Dykstra’s active direction, each member of the family moves fitfully around the tea-coloured tenement, the world shining through their window in the form of Lorenzo Savoini’s gorgeous, melancholic lighting. Sex, too, comes through the window in the music wafting from the dance hall across the alley, or in the hinted-at experiences Tom has when he goes to the movies every night.
The Glass Menagerie is filtered through Tom’s memory, but this unflinching and impassioned production speaks long after his has faded.
stage@nowtoronto.com
