The Glass Menagerie — shards of brilliant light shine in local adaptation

Daily Maverick

2 days ago

Nico Scheepers's adaptation – theatre lovers' theatre of the finest order – remains as relevant as ever.
The Southern woman Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) conjures to life in his iconic stage plays such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie is trapped so thoroughly in the performance of subscribed and prescribed expectations that the only road to freedom and fulfillment is through a man.
What self-knowledge there is must remain buried, self-limitation and service to others is all that is on offer – make sure everyone's happy. Such is the anxious glimpse Williams provides in this precision theatre classic.
Contemporary relevance
Today these struggles remain in the lives of those who have not yet been able to turn away from marriage and traditional relationships.
On Facebook, on The Village group in Cape Town, stories of wretched matrimonial emotional and financial imprisonment play out daily. The Glass Menagerie remains as relevant today as it was then, sadly, we might add. But such is life.
For this fine South African adaptation by Nico Scheepers, who also directs, Amanda Wingfield (played by the ever-startling Anna-Mart van der Merwe) is a woman once courted by the richest wine farmers in the Cape. But oh, tragedy, she ended up with a 'dud', disappearing postman husband and two grown children.
(The play translated by Scheepers as Speelgoed van Glas enjoys a run in Afrikaans at the Flipside at the Baxter from 8 to 16 August).
Family triage
The narrator is the brooding Tom (played with such intimate subtlety by Ben Albertyn that you feel he is speaking only to you) a poet, writer and movie enthusiast burdened by having to take a mundane job to support his mother and sister Laura (Carla Smith).
The Glass Menagerie is drawn from the playwright's own life, hence the authentic claustrophobia that hovers throughout this snake-charmer of a 110-minute production.
As Laura, Carla Smith is as translucent as the glass animals she collects and the flickering television she watches, while her impinging mother fusses and frets about her future as she has 'no gentlemen callers'.
This translucency has much to do with Smith's rendering of Laura but also Scheepers's exquisite lighting and set which are a key to capturing the tiny flicker of light Willams tries to leave in the room and which is reflected in the glass menagerie collection.
Nell van der Merwe and Jean du Plessis have precision-plotted the tiny arena in which this drama must play out.
Simmering resentment
Van der Merwe, as the neurotic Amanda, controls every move her son makes, every mouthful he takes, begging and urging him to bring home a man, any man, to meet Laura, who is 'crippled' by a buckled foot.
With humour wrought from pain and disappointment she goes about her life's task while self-absorbed in her once-carefree, vivacious life as the child of wealth and prestige, now lost of course.
Into this simmering domestic resentment and carping Willams tosses the Englishman Jim O'Connor (rendered sweet-natured and polite by Mark Elderkin), with two pens in his top pocket and who is a colleague of Tom's.
Elderkin conjures to life the ordinary guy, taking lessons in 'public speaking', a former athlete following a 'path to success'. Laura, who harboured a secret crush on Jim in his younger days, is at first terrified into paralysis but opens up as he recalls her and his pet name for her.
This being Williams we know the tiny crevice of light that has been let in is soon about to be snuffed out, but not entirely. We do not need spoiler alerts with Williams. This is theatre lovers' theatre of the finest order. Once you enter the Wingfield home there is no turning back. DM