STAGE REVIEW : ‘Glass Menagerie’ Takes a Poignant Bow at the Bowery

SAN DIEGO —  Time has not dimmed the glow created in 1944 by Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.”

In a poignant production at the Bowery Theatre’s Kingston Playhouse, the semi-autobiographical play remains of interest not only for its own rich merits, but also because it marked Williams’ passage from obscure playwright to a major American voice.

Williams had a poet’s ability to plumb the extraordinary in the ordinary. In a seemingly simple tale about a single mother and her two grown children, he found a struggle for survival between mother and son that was savage under its genteel clothing.

Under the sensitive direction of Ralph Elias, artistic director of the Bowery Theatre, the play is here performed by a fine ensemble of young actors that understand what is at stake. And yet there was a greenness on opening night to the love-hate, attraction-repulsion dynamics between the principal antagonists, Allison Brennan as the mother, Amanda Wingfield, and Philip Charles Sneed as the son, Tom.

But Tracy Bryce as the daughter, Laura, and James Crawford as the Gentleman Caller, on whom the Wingfields pin all their hopes of rescue, are achingly perfect.

Just as the Gentleman Caller did not deliver the hoped for happiness for the Wingfields, a review of Williams’ career shows that his fame following “The Glass Menagerie” did not bring him what he wished for either.

Like the domineering mother, the crippled sister and Williams’ own alter-ego, the son who must escape from those he loves if he is to save his own life, Williams found the navigation between the shoals of fantasy and reality a treacherous one.

He won two Pulitzer Prizes--for “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1947 and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1955--and became a meteoric force on Broadway and in Hollywood for nearly two decades, until his health and his reputation deteriorated in the final two decades of his life. A nervous condition and addiction to sleeping pills and liquor plagued him until he died, seven years ago, choking on a bottle cap.

No one in the 1944 audience of that first great play of his could possibly have known what was to come.

But today one can see the writer’s entire canon--if not his life-- foreshadowed in the light that shines through the little glass animals the sister, Laura, collects in the play.

Tom may call his mother a witch. But one need look no farther than characters like Blanche du Bois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Miss Alma in “Summer and Smoke” to see that he saw the mother as a heroine in her own right. She is struggling, in her own misguided way, to take care of her children. Like Blanche and Alma, her tragedy is that the only way she knows how to survive is to attempt to nag those around her to become people they are not.

And what we are not told in “The Glass Menagerie” but we do see in the later plays, is that her forcefulness and determination is part hysteria, part veneer. If you were to push her too far she could break, just as Williams’ later characters do.

Tom needs to think badly of his mother to summon up the courage to leave. Williams’ work shows us over and over again that even the most seemingly innocent human relations can be nothing less than a fight for survival.

The great strength of the Bowery production is that Brennan finds the vulnerability in a tough Amanda, and Sneed the toughness in the vulnerable Tom.

The weakness in the production is that the two have not yet found the proper balance in their adversarial roles.

In addition, Sneed’s performance captured Tom’s melancholy, but to excess; there should be moments of relief in the performance. Brennan, who perfectly and precisely poked and prodded and pressed her children, like a peck-peck-pecking chicken, gave a performance that, nevertheless, occasionally cracked because of the actress’ nervousness--surprising considering the seasoned professional that she is.

Tracy Bryce is perfect as Laura, Tom’s sister who retreats from the real world into one of old Victrola records and little glass animals. A theater companion remarked critically that she seemed slightly retarded instead of the painfully shy girl the script calls for. But even that felt right; this is a woman modeled after Williams’ sister Rose, who was hospitalized with mental problems.

If she were only shy, it would be an affliction she could overcome with therapy. Bryce’s performance takes Laura’s affliction a step farther, to the point where we feel Laura operating from another world.

The most eloquent moments come when Bryce meets the young man Amanda has persuaded Tom to bring home from the factory as a prospective suitor.

James Crawford, as Jim O’Connor, flawlessly plays what Tom describes as an “emissary from a world of reality.”

When Jim tries to draw Laura out of her fantasy world and succeeds for just a moment, the effect is shattering--literally for one of her figurines--and figuratively for her.

Their encounter keeps replaying itself in the memory with aching accuracy.

As we have come to expect from Bowery Theatre productions, the technical support is subtle and satisfying. The set design by John Blunt conveys the threadbare simplicity of the family’s crowded home. A reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica by Amy Thornberry and Deanna Dean, occasionally visible through lighting effects by Kevin Susman, points to the symbolic nature of this memory play. Dione Lebhar’s costumes recreate the period, and, touchingly, when Amanda dresses up in faded finery for the gentleman caller, point to a romantic era long since gone.

But best of all is Lawrence Czoka’s score, which mixes original music with music from the 1930s to create a mood that follows the characters hauntingly.

Despite some discomfort in the principal players on opening night, this is an auspicious season opener for the Bowery Theatre.

“THE GLASS MENAGERIE”

By Tennessee Williams. Director, Ralph Elias. Set and technical direction, John Blunt. Composer and sound designer, Lawrence Czoka. Lighting, Kevin Susman. Costumes, Dione Lebhar. Scenic artists, Amy Thornberry and Deanna Dean. Stage manager, Rebecca Nachison. With Philip Charles Sneed, Tracy Bryce, Allison Brennan and James Crawford. At 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays, with Sunday matinees at 2, through Sept. 30. At 1055 1st Ave., San Diego, (619) 232-4088.