“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve…”
When Tim
Draxl appears on stage as the narrator of The Glass Menagerie, dressed
as a merchant sailor, but looking for all the world like an illustration by Tom
of Finland, we are dropped into a world as described by playwright Tennessee
Williams but perhaps not as he ever imagined. Draxl flexes his muscular arm,
one tattooed with an anchor, and grabs his crotch. If the queerness of the
character is only alluded to in the text of this 1944 play, the new production
at Melbourne Theatre Company is bold in its directness.
The text of
William’s memory play is very specific about how things should appear (“dimly
lighted”) and sound (“in memory, everything seems to happen to music”), while
also being open to interpretation. The narrator is also Tom Wingfield, described as “an
undisguised convention” which gives a theatre company permission to use him with
whatever dramatic licence is convenient. In the opening monologue, it is clear
that even if Tom’s story lends itself to sentiment, it is not and should not be
realistic.
Having seen
three productions over the years, all deploying their own unique theatrical
conventions, they all tended to realism during the body of the play while
having fun with the narrator at the edges. Belvoir artistic director Eamon
Flack wove in video elements and a mirror ball. A solid indie production at the
Meat Market last year was played in traverse, inside a box, emphasising voyeurism.
Director
Mark Wilson, whose production of Much Ado About Nothing last year was
uproarious and sharply political, has found a way to see The Glass Menagerie
anew without losing the heart and the warmth of William’s first successful
play. His clear, compelling vision of the piece creates a glimpse into history,
while reminding us this is a fiction, this is illusion, this is poetry.
Kat Chan’s
set of smudged walls and different levels suggests, in full tableau, mismatched
photos pasted on a wall: it’s a recollection of a space rather than a real place.
It’s dotted with period detail – the Victrola, the wood-burning stove, the old-fashioned
telephone – but it doesn’t quite feel like the 1930s of anywhere. Matilda
Woodroofe’s costume design is similarly uncanny, reading of some non-specific
past but not of it. In particular, the dresses worn by Laura and Amanda in the
second act, are comical in their exaggerated stylized details.
Paul Lim’s
lighting is expertly crafted, from the subtle shifts of shadows from moonlight
indicating the passing of time, to the warm diffuse glow of the later scenes
that are ostensibly candlelight. Marco Cher uses the “fiddle in the wings” as
described by Williams to create a score of strings that are often staccato and
discordant. A couple of times moments of drama are embellished by Lim and Cher’s
work almost to the point of melodrama, but Wilson knows when to pull back, even if
these elements are pushed to breaking point.
The odd
tonal shifts are navigated effortlessly by the cast. Draxl leans into the
overly masc narrator-as-sailor, while playing Tom in moments as a petulant child. The line between his two “roles” blurs as the
play goes on, with Tom code-switching while he forges a fresh start for
himself. His interactions with the Gentleman Caller in the second act are
usually played with subtle sexual tension, but here, in his memory, Tom is ready
to claw the other man’s clothes from his body.
The
Gentleman Caller character is only briefly described as “nice, ordinary young
man” by Williams and, in a sense, Harry McGee lends him a down-to-earth charm.
But even then, as the too-good-to-be-true suitor of Tom’s sister, Laura, McGee gives
him the air of an amusing straight man in contrast to the chaotic Wingfield
family. Ordinary, but not quite.
Laura
Wingfield is a tricky part to get right because she disappears into fantasy,
while living with a physical disability and crippling shyness. Some of the
language used to describe the character is dated, but the compassion for her
situation must have been refreshing for the time. (Williams’ more direct
analogue for his own sister in his play Suddenly Last Summer is not
afforded quite the same respect as Laura and its depiction of disability is
much more problematic.) Millie Donaldson fleshes her out and finds ways of
standing up to her mother and brother that are rich and satisfying.
The character
of Amanda Wingfield is one of the great parts in theatre and there is no getting
past the fact that Alison Whyte was going to find a way to live up to its
history and to make it her own. Amanda is a difficult character to sympathise
with because she is so demanding and critical of her children, but Whyte
calibrates her performance to find ways to show she is a survivor. Whyte is
unmissable in the role.
There’s a
fifth character, of course, the father who exists only as a photograph on the
wall. In this production, Kat Chan has made the image deliberately out of focus
or perhaps a double-exposure. It’s a small detail but it’s so profound. We don’t
learn a lot about the man who left the Wingfields, sending only a postcard that
said “Hello – Goodbye” but in this one choice it suggests a double life,
perhaps a father not unlike his son.
Director
Mark Wilson talks about finding new perspectives when creating a revival of a
classic work. Some audiences and critics prize faithfulness to text above all
else. But when you’re reviving a “memory play” where the playwright explicitly
gives you free reign and doesn’t want for realism, why would any new production
feel like the last? And what is faithfulness to memory anyway? It’s nostalgia,
which Wilson describes as a sickness.
Melbourne Theatre Company’s latest production of The Glass Menagerie, two decades after the last, isn’t here to remind you of the play you’ve seen before. It’s a stimulating, sometimes unhinged, reworking of a classic. It exists to challenge your notion of the play, the playwright and memory itself. It takes the component parts and turns up the dials on different elements in unexpected ways. It is Williams’ play in every way, but maybe not as you remember it.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
The Glass Menagerie is playing at the Southbank Theatre until June 5
Photos: Pia Johnson
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