A COMPELLING CLASSIC GRIPS ITS AUDIENCE IN ARIZONA THEATRE COMPANY'S PRODUCTION OF "THE GLASS MENAGERIE"

By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com

 

photo by Tim Fuller

Tempers rise when (from left) daughter Laura (Michelle Chin), mother Amanda (Lillie Richardson) and son Tom (Aaron Cammack) try to find some peace in their dowdy St. Louis apartment during "The Glass Menagerie"

Tennessee Williams' “The Glass Menagerie” is almost 80 years old, a bona fide stage classic of enduring power. The Arizona Theatre Company's current production, directed by Chanel Bragg, goes for the jugular to capture a time of anxious cultural change in 1930s America.

A cast of four brings tension to every scene as Amanda Wingfield (Lillie Richardson) desperately clings to her remembered youth as a Southern belle, her grown son Tom (Aaron Cammack) tries to protect his frail younger sister Laura (Michelle Chin) from life in general, and Tom's workmate Jim O'Connor (Paul Deo Jr.) bursts in to embrace his own future with enthusiasm.

So we watch, fascinated, as Bragg carefully stacks her conflicted house of cards, balancing each erratic confrontation that's been warped by the unspoken undertow of frustrated desire.

Often described as “a memory play” of remembered emotions that might or might not be exaggerations of what actually did happen, scenic designer Josafath Reynoso has enhanced this shadowy feeling with an abstract design of lines and a fire escape stretched across the stage's backdrop while adding in neon the bawdy word “Paradise” to imply another fantasy world completely out of this family's reach, though it exists as a nightclub of reckless expression right across the street.

“Glass Menagerie” was Williams' Broadway breakthrough in 1945, filled with dialogue that breaths the general fear of the Great Depression era, even as each of these characters has a death grip on hope for something better.

Richardson creates an Amanda of compulsive willfulness but, even so, we can still feel sorry for her.

Chin as the delicate Laura makes us believe in her love for the tiny glass figurines as easily broken as Laura herself.

Cammack portrays stoic Tom as the unwilling man of the house always trying to please his mother and his sister but only making himself more desperate.

Deo's Jim, best known as the gentleman caller, catches a nice sense of a guy trying to make a positive impression on everyone he meets.

Bragg brings them all together, reshuffled and bent, building to the gasp of a wrenching conclusion that will leave it's mark on your heart.

“The Glass Menagerie” runs through Feb. 11 with performances at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays- Fridays; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; in the downtown Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.

Tickets are $25-$85. For details, reservations and current COVID protocol, visit atc.org or phone the box office 1-833-ATC-SEAT. Masks are recommended but not required.