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The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, narrator Tom Wingfield tells us in his opening soliloquy. Director Michael Costello and the gifted actors in this cast treat it as just that, a dream-like sequence of deeply felt events taking place in the shadowed, intimate space of Tex-Arts' Kam and James Morris Theatre out in Lakeway. For those who don't know or have forgotten this American classic: it's the late 1930s. A mother and her two grown children live in a rented apartment in St. Louis, barely getting by. The son Tom pays the bills with the wages from his menial job in a warehouse; his handicapped younger sister Laura, turning ever inward, has dropped out of secretarial school and devotes herself to her collection of glass animals, the glass menagerie of the title. Their father disappeared long ago -- a telephone man "in love with long distances." Their mother Amanda Wingfield, a faded southern belle, is searching for some way to secure the family's uncertain future. This 1944 two-act play was Tennessee Williams' first stage success. It has lived over the many years since then because Williams captured with his simple story and quiet imagery the fragility of hope and the enduring call of memory. Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Todd Dellinger of Tex-Arts, posts an offer of special pricing for this Thursday's performance of The Glass Menagerie. ALT's recommendation of this production: "The most accomplished and moving production around Austin so far this season. Babs George as Amanda Wingfield is haunting and as lustrous as a hurricane lamp, Jude Hickey is angry, gentle and valiant. Only two weekends more, to 3/14 at Tex-Arts, Lakeway." (Full review forthcoming.)Posted as a comment to the ALT.com "upcoming" announcement:
Click for ALT review, March 5
UPDATE: Review by Barry Pineo for the Austin Chronicle, March 4Found on-line:Tex-Arts' professional program presentsTennessee Williams' The Glass Menageriewith Babs George and Jude Hickey
directed by Michael Costello
February 26 - March 14
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Kam & James Morris Theatre
2300 Lohmann's Spur, Lakeway
Tickets $30 - $56 through NowPlayingAustin.com
The Glass Menagerie is one of America’s great plays, written by Tennessee Williams and performed as part of TexARTS’ professional Off-Broadway Series. The semi-autobiographical play was originally written for MGM. It premiered in Chicago in 1944 and in 1945 won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
The Glass Menagerie was Williams's first successful play. He went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights. Williams (whose real name was Thomas) largely reflects himself in the main narrator character of Tom, who recounts his life with his mother Amanda and his sickly, supposedly mentally ill sister. William's real-life sister Rose is transformed into Tom's sister Laura, whose nickname in the play is "Blue Roses," a result of an unfortunate bout of pleurosis as a high school student. This union production integrates some of the region’s finest talent and brings one of our greatest American plays and playwrights to life with depth and quality.
