By Cari Lynn Pace and Barry Willis
San Francisco Playhouse has launched an ambitious new production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, which will run through June 15.
Set in a shabby apartment in St. Louis in the spring of 1939, on the verge of World War II, the classic mid-century family drama gets an unusual treatment by director Jeffrey Lo. Instead of an intimate or nearly claustrophobic setting, the Wingfield family residence is on a high open platform atop SFP’s famous turntable stage, a feature that worked supremely well in Guys and Dolls and Nollywood Dreams.
“… Susi Damilano … anchors this Glass Menagerie …”
Whether a rotating stage is appropriate for this production is a matter of personal opinion. Lo also has his actors sit stage-left and stage-right when they are not in a scene, like basketball players on the sidelines waiting to return to the game.
The Wingfields—matriarch Amanda (Susi Damilano), asocial daughter Laura (Nicole Javier), and disaffected son Tom (Jomar Tagatac)—struggle to survive in the wake of a long-ago departure by an unnamed father and husband, whose vandalized portrait presides over everything in the household. Behind it is a huge neon sign for the Paradise, a music club across the alley from the Wingfield apartment. The sign is beautiful, beckoning, and aspirational but we hear little music from the club.
Amanda is an aging Southern belle who has never let go of her glory days attending cotillions in the Mississippi delta, where she was courted by—in her memory—a seemingly endless procession of “gentlemen callers.” Laura is a high-school dropout with a limp, who pretends to be attending secretarial school while doing little more than wandering around town, playing old records on the family’s Victrola, or managing her collection of glass animal figurines—the “glass menagerie” of the show’s title.
Tom is a would-be writer toiling away in a shoe warehouse, and the tale’s narrator in Williams’ gorgeous prose. He and Laura both chafe under pressure from their mother, but Tom alone displays open rebellion, much of it self-defeating, such as spending money for the household’s monthly expenses on personal frivolities—including making his first payment for merchant mariners’ union dues.
Lo introduces Laura’s only gentleman caller, Tom’s co-worker Jim O’Connor (William Thomas Hodgson), immediately in the first scene, although he doesn’t appear in the drama until much later, when his tentative introduction to Laura appears promising but goes awry when he recognizes that the Wingfield family dysfunction isn’t to his liking.
Javier brings a weary lack of confidence to her character, but director Lo doesn’t give her much opportunity to mine Laura’s nuances. In the entire production, we don’t see her at the Victrola or playing with her glass collection until her encounter with Jim. Javier is underutilized in this production—she could contribute much more with directorial encouragement.
The set, in fact, doesn’t include a Victrola at all, but stage-right there’s an oddly-positioned 1980s-style record player—clearly not part of the Wingfield residence—to which Tom returns several times to cue up a 12” vinyl record, which also didn’t exist in 1939. The Glass Menagerie is what Williams called “a memory play,” so it’s possible that this gambit is a visual reference to a time in the future when Tom is recalling his past.
Even so, it’s one of several anachronisms in the show. Another is the ultra-long cigarette that Tom habitually smokes, a product that didn’t hit the market until the 1980s. Jomar Tagatac is a fabulous actor with wonderful delivery. He appears frequently at most major SF and Bay Area theaters, but it’s a big leap of faith to accept him as a 20-something aspiring writer. He’s more like an uncle to Laura than a brother and former high-school classmate. Hodgson is also a talented prolific actor and nails the subtlety of the Jim O’Connor role, without bringing anything new.
But it’s Susi Damilano who anchors this Glass Menagerie. She absolutely shines in the role of Amanda, a character often portrayed as bitter, delusional, and manipulative—a fearsome harridan. Damilano turns this tradition on its head—yes, her Amanda exudes worry, frustration, annoyance, insistence, and pathos, but is also infused with love, whimsy, good humor, and self-awareness. Damilano mines hidden comedy in the Amanda role. She has always done great work, but she finds new depth is a character that other performers have been prodding for eighty-some years. Her performance alone is worth the price of admission. Brava!
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ASR Senior Writer & Editor Cari Lynn Pace is a voting member of SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and writes theatre and lifestyle reviews for the Marinscope Community Newspapers throughout Marin County.
ASR NorCal Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: [email protected]
| Production | The Glass Menagerie |
|---|---|
| Written by | Tennessee Williams |
| Directed by | Jeffrey Lo |
| Producing Company | San Francisco Playhouse |
| Production Dates | Thru June 15ht |
| Production Address | SF Playhouse 450 Post Street San Francisco, CA |
| Website | www.sfplayhouse.org |
| Telephone | (415) 677-9596 |
| Tickets | $30-$125 |
| Reviewer Score | Max in each category is 5/5 |
| Overall | 4/5 |
| Performance | 4/5 |
| Script | 4.75/5 |
| Stagecraft | 3/5 |
| Aisle Seat Review Pick? | YES! |