'Menagerie' breaks your heart all over again
By Michael Phillips
Tribune theater critic

January 10 2005

In the 60 years since "The Glass Menagerie" made its world premiere in Chicago, has any American playwright written a two-person scene to rival the one set in a sad, small St. Louis apartment sitting room, containing only a young woman and her gentleman caller?

In Chicago and New York, critical acclaim for what longtime Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy memorably termed "a dream in the dusk and a tough little play" tended to flood in the direction of Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda Wingfield. In this character, Tennessee Williams wrote a memorably domineering, achingly brittle Southern belle, adrift in late-Depression era St. Louis, exasperated by circumstance, heartbroken by daughter Laura and by her son, Tom, the play's narrator.

Yet with most every revival of Williams' defiantly unsentimental play, it is the second-act encounter between Laura and Jim that puts the audience through the sort of emotional heaven, and hell, we call a memorable night at the theater.

In the disarming new Hypocrites production of "Menagerie," director Sean Graney does what any director must do. He treats Williams' play like a new play, not a classic, and the itchy, often unexpected details that emerge in his fiercely acted production do indeed make things live and breathe in the present.

It is a physically compact staging in one of the Athenaeum Theatre studio spaces. An angled white curtain separates the audience from the set at the beginning. On the curtain a video image of a flickering candle greets us, and then, words from an e.e. cummings poem ("not even the rain has such small hands"). Donna McGough plays Amanda, and it's a vibrant performance, not entirely right in terms of dialect, but propulsive and raw and moving.

Mechelle Moe is her daughter, Laura, and her particular comic and dramatic qualities work well here. She errs in allowing Laura to blubber quite so much in Act 1, but in Act 2, when Laura is practically crawling out of her skin in despair, on her death march to the door to let in her dreaded, beloved caller, something happens to the production as a whole: It finds itself, and the effect is potent.

Robert McLean leans too hard on the sarcasm as Tom, but he has a nice way of moving a scene forward, as does Steve Wilson's caller Jim, the former high school hero on the road to ordinariness. Wilson's best scene is the long, brilliant one with Laura and her titular glass collection. The pacing from this scene straight to the end of the play is remarkably deft and swift.

Graney initially had in mind a revival going back to Williams' projected titles and images, visual signifiers relating to what narrator Tom calls "the social background of the play." Wisely, Graney opted for a more selectively stylized production.

That is, with one enormous and unfortunate exception. Sound designer Joseph Fosco and composer Kevin O'Donnell smother every moment in background music, some of it clever (bits of it are played backward, lending an eerie quality) but ultimately numbing. This isn't sound design, it's sound attack. Yet the production, which is often fascinating and never stodgy, survives this misjudgment before sending the audience out in a happily unsettled state.

Copyright © 2005, The Chicago Tribune

Hypocrites mold 'Menagerie' into fresh masterpiece
January 11, 2005

'Glass' sparkles BY BARBARA VITELLO Daily Herald Staff Writer Posted Thursday, January 13, 2005 Reviving a gem like Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" puts pressure on a theater company, even one as accomplished as The Hypocrites. But diamonds form under pressure, and with this heartfelt, gracefully realized production, the Chicago ensemble has produced one that is nearly flawless. It helps having superior raw material in the form of Williams' artfully poetic, exquisitely conceived "memory play" about the Wingfield family: matriarch Amanda (Donna McGough), a fading southern belle abandoned by her husband; her emotionally fragile daughter Laura (Mechelle Moe); frustrated son Tom (Robert McLean); and Tom's co-worker Jim (Steve Wilson), the genial gentleman caller who unwittingly upends their lives. Yearning and disappointment permeate this lyrical drama (which premiered in Chicago in 1944), in which its characters' fleeting happiness is underscored by quiet despair and tempered by crushing guilt. The menagerie of the title refers to Laura's collection of glass figurines. A shy young woman, self-conscious of her limp and unable to overcome life's trials and disappointments, Laura retreats to an interior world of polished glass and old tunes. Amanda, worried her daughter will end up alone and unloved, suffering the fate of birdlike spinsters "eating the crust of humility" offered by put-upon relatives, recruits Tom - a would-be poet longing for adventures denied, a warehouse worker living with his mother and sister in a St. Louis tenement - to find a suitable young man for his sister. Tom obliges and invites Jim, a high school acquaintance of his sister, to dinner. Unlike Amanda and Laura, who exist within the quaint illusion they've created, the ambitious, energetic Jim is rooted in reality, a reality in which Laura cannot share. The eloquent production works thanks to astute direction by Hypocrites celebrated artistic director Sean Graney, who also designed the uncluttered but confining set; hazy, atmospheric lighting courtesy of Heather Graff and Richard Petersen; and polished performances by talented actors whose nonverbal exchanges are as powerful as their spoken words. McGough is sensitive and steely in her portrayal of the eternal optimist Amanda who is increasingly worried about her daughter's future and her son's departure. Her poised performance humanizes this oppressive, but well-meaning, mother who loves her children, but can't help suffocating them. Combative when confronting her son about his drinking, movie-going and taste in literature, her mood turns repentant following their détente and serene at the prospect of him securing a beau for her daughter. Credit McGough (for making Amanda's transition seamless) and McLean (her able partner on this emotional ride) for this emotional, illuminating exchange. Moe, whose expressive face registers every unintentional blow to Laura's wounded heart, makes palpable the character's anguish (watching the distraught Moe reluctantly make her way to the door to admit the boy she's admired for years is gut-wrenching). It is an aching portrayal, yet Moe is also adept at conveying Laura's joy at the glimmer of happiness Jim holds out before waking her from her dream. Wilson does a fine job as the "long-delayed but always expected something." He combines the confidence of a man who feels at home everywhere with genuine kindness toward the delicate creature he unintentionally injures. Wilson, Moe and Graney deserve kudos for the expertly-paced, beautifully executed courtship scene. If Laura is the fragile heart of the play, Tom - in the dual roles of participant and narrator - is its tortured soul. McLean is excellent as a brother and son torn between fulfilling his family obligations and pursuing his own dreams. McLean combines bitterness and despair in his portrayal of a wounded, restless man who realizes to save himself he must destroy those he loves. McLean's agonized plea that concludes the play is a finely-tuned crescendo of guilt and grief that reminds us that the pain he inflicted consumes him as well. "The Glass Menagerie" out of four   The Glass Menagerie Achingly well done production of an American classic. Ed Rutherford   January 9, 2005 - centerstagechicago.com Tennessee Williams' play, "The Glass Menagerie," seems to be thrust upon most high school English students sooner or later, making the story a familiar one: Tom Wingfield tells of his time living with his mother Amanda, a faded Southern belle, and his sister Laura, crippled and painfully timid. Often remounted, as well as adapted to the big screen, many people balk at seeing a production; we've been there, done that. How could a production possibly contain anything new to an audience? Fortunately, the production of "The Glass Menagerie" playing at the Athenaeum Theatre is in the capable hands of The Hypocrites. Director Sean Graney and his design team have made some interesting choices with the piece, mostly aimed at returning to the author's original intent (Williams has written that he had to eliminate many of the more dreamlike, magical elements of the piece in order to maintain the realism favored by the audiences of the day). A gauzy shroud is stretched to frame the acts of the play, and melancholy music plays throughout. The colored lights from the music hall mentioned in the play seem to have been an integral part of the design; different colors bleed into the apartment set as different characters are caught up in memories, grief, or raging fury. And speaking of the characters, this show's real magic is in the acting. As Tom, Rob McLean handles the seething frustration of the role very well. Donna McGough as Amanda is both delightful in her vivacity and terrifying when her anger and desperation show through. Steve Wilson is occasionally a tad rushed, but manages to land some of the evening's funniest moments in what is frequently a thankless role as the Gentleman Caller. The play's shining star (if such a term can be applied to someone so pathologically shy) is the Laura delivered by Mechelle Moe. She is so heartbreakingly believable in her total inability to cope with social interactions and confrontations that she becomes utterly beguiling to the audience. With nary a false note, Moe's Laura gently carries us in the palm of her hand throughout the night, and her plight is deeply moving. One could voice minor quibbles; personally I found the e.e. cummings poetry at the start of both acts to be redundant in the face of the rough poetry of Tom's monologues that immediately follow. Nevertheless, "The Glass Menagerie" is an excellent play, excellently presented by an excellent theater troupe.

The Glass Menagerie
Brandon Hayes, chicagocritic.com

 Set in a tiny Saint Louis apartment during the Great Depression, The Glass Menagerie is a portrait of the Wingfield family, mother, daughter and son, long ago abandoned by the dashing father whose oversized portrait dominates both the stage and the family's dreams and conflicts. The son, Tom (Robert McLean), is a sensitive young man, an aspiring poet, nicknamed "Shakespeare" by the coworkers at his crushing warehouse job. His sister, Laura (Mechelle Moe), is a slight cripple and introvert so profound that she sabotages her chances at business college with panic attacks. While both are children of the Midwest, their mother Amanda (Donna McGough) is a daughter of the South…Tennessee first and then the Delta.

 After the failure of the business college plan, and sensing that her son will soon bolt from his job and family to join the Merchant Marines, Amanda demands that he first bring home from the warehouse a gentleman caller for his sister, a man who will provide the security that the father smiling out from the portrait never could.  And thus, Tennessee Williams gives us a memory play of juxtapositions. Amanda's Southern sensibility of grace and charm only serves to make Laura's awkwardness all the more striking. And while we pity Tom his circumstance as trapped caretaker of both his family and his dreams, the act two entrance of the gregarious Jim O'Connor (Steve Wilson), the long-awaited gentleman caller, breathes real youth and vitality into a household suffocating on its own dreams. Tom's agitation and drunkeness, Laura's obsession with her glass menagerie of tiny animals, and Amanda's reminisences of girlhood romance and jonquils seem almost masochistic when the charming, well-spoken, ambitious young outsider enters the household for an evening.  While Laura is trapped in a nonexistant present, Amanda dotes on the past, and Tom busts for the future, Jim calmly embodies all three.

 The self-imposed suffocation is made palpable in Sean Graney's production by the omnipresent, at times oppressive, presense of Kevin O'Donnell's original music.  From the opening e. e. cummings recitation to the final curtain, repetitious, sentimental music pervades the evening.  The music works in concert with the very fine set and evocatively shabby period costumes to create a sentimentality that Tom as narrator warns us of in the opening lines.  But said plainly, the volume could have been turned down, not only for audience, but also for the ensemble of very fine actors.

 The actors portraying the three Wingfields and their gentleman caller were consistent and convincing.  Robert McLean's agitated Tom perfectly matched Donna McGough's Amanda, who could turn from maternal histrionics to dreamy optimism in a moment. Steve Wilson handled the difficult role of Jim with a genuinely real mix of humility and cockiness. Each of the three, assisted by the straighrforwardly effective lighting design by Heather Graff and Richard Peterson, delivered lovely moments when Tennessee Williams' words lived and breathed with simple, theatrical honesty.

 The evening, however, belonged to Mechelle Moe. Moe transcended the production and made the pacing and lighting and costuming seem incidental with her astonishingly complete realization of Laura Wingfield. Even in moments when she is silent, Moe gave Laura a near-operatic range of emotions, conveying naïve hope and stalwart sense near-simultaneously through the character's gentle face and limited physicality. The sum is a not-to-be-missed performance in one of the most respected American plays.

Highly Recommended

January 9, 2005