Blazey Best, Bridie McKim and Danny Ball. Photo Prudence Upton
This is a memory play says Tom at the beginning of The Glass Menagerie, as he promises to give ‘truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion’ and his soft-spoken recollections and the lyricism of Tennessee Williams’ words draw us into his story immediately, and never let us go. Quite where Tom Wingfield (Danny Ball) is when he delivers these words from the shadows of a fire escape doesn’t matter, because he goes from there to the cramped apartment in St Louis, Missouri, which he shares with his mother Amanda (Blazey Best) and sister Laura (Bridie McKim). It is the 1930s, the Great Depression.
That memory can play tricks with truth is echoed in designer Grace Deacon’s set, where behind the conventional nondescript furniture, the wallpaper slides surrealistically onto the floor. A portrait of the long-absent Wingfield senior, who deserted his family years ago, smiles relentlessly out of the floral design. The tensions within the home are soon apparent: Amanda, a faded coquette whose own memory tells her she had once had the world (and 17 gentleman callers) at her feet is now reduced to near poverty and desperately anxious to secure a future for her daughter; Laura, painfully shy and as transparent and fragile as the glass animals that she collects in her ‘menagerie’, incurs her mother’s anger when she admits she was too nervous of the great outside to attend college and has dropped out; Tom, who is the breadwinner and hates his job in a shoe warehouse, writes poetry and, though desperate to escape his milieu, is torn (initially at least) between family responsibility and a search for adventure – any adventure. His refuge from his mother is the fire escape, from which he can look down on proceeedings.
In Amanda’s eyes, the solution to all their problems is a gentleman caller; someone who will marry Laura and give her a home and security.
This production, under Liesel Badorrek’s production lacks for nothing. The performances of all four actors (Tom Rodgers plays Jim, a workmate of Tom’s, who is the potential answer to Amanda’s prayers) are all simply superb; the soft and shadowy lighting (Verity Hampson) evokes the time and places; sound composers Maria Alfonsine and Damian de Boos-Smith ramp up the emotions in this play.
The pace is wonderfully varied; some scenes drift in slow motion, adding to the dramatic highs and lows. Tom and Amanda’s raw arguments are delivered with force; McKim, who has the fewest lines in the play, nevertheless captivates with her withdrawn delicacy; and Rodgers, who arrives in Act 2, combines compassion and braggadocio as Jim.
The action flows seamlessy. Some standout moments: Amanda arrives to greet Jim in an old ballgown, an outfit that is guaranteed to make the audience smile and her son Tom wince. Best is mesmerising, whether as a faded Southern belle or an irate and anxious parent.
McKim, when dressed to impress in pale blue gauzy finery, like a Cinderella about to go to the ball, shows us without speaking all her hopes and fears for the gentleman caller. Such a moving little cameo, her little smiles, her daring to hope; it lingers in the mind.
Rodger’s Jim, upon whom all hopes rest, has an optimism the others lack, as he dreams of a brighter future in a world on the brink of change. And he leaves us wondering, as he makes his excuse: is he lying?
Ball’s Tom, lonely and restless, wondering as he looks at the portrait of his cad of a father, what a man is, or should, be – lover, hunter, fighter? – and who has his deserter father as his role model. His closing scene is as memorable as his first.
All in all, Badorrek and her team excel themselves in this Glass Menagerie. Not to be missed.
Until 26 April
Tickets $43-$90 plus booking fee
https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the
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