A family as fragile as glass ORIELLE BERRY
A mother’s ‘love’ and terrified siblings clash when a gentleman calls in ‘The Glass Menagerie’
MARCEL Meyer is one of our most talented and foremost actors, appearing in roles from Shakespearean tragedies to 20th century dramas. Together with partner Eric Abrahamse, the pair have collaborated on many must-see productions over the years where set design and costumes play as much as a role as the star-studded casts.
Coming to the local stage next month is American playwright Tennessee Williams’s The
Glass Menagerie, which in 1944 had its world premiere in Chicago. At the time it launched the playwright’s career and the play became a classic, and has been translated into over 20 languages.
Seventy-five years later, Abrahams and Meyer pay tribute to what is lauded as an “acclaimed masterpiece”. In the play, set in 1937, a talkative, domineering mother, Amanda Wingfield, rules the roost over her shy daughter, Laura, and her rebellious son, Tom. In an effort to kindle a romance for Laura, she invites to dinner one of Tom’s workmates, Jim, The Gentleman Caller, only to watch her well-intentioned plans fall to pieces as cruelly as the glass figurines in the menagerie of the title.
Referred to as a memory play, its action is drawn from the memories of Tom, the narrator, who is an aspiring poet and toils in a shoe warehouse to support his mother and sister. Laura’s glass animal figurine collection is the glass menagerie and effectively represents facets of her personality. Like the figurines, Laura is delicate, fanciful, and oldfashioned and finds a way to escape reality through her glass menagerie and the phonograph records she plays that once belonged to their father, while Tom also longs for fanciful flight.
Meyer says the play is written with a “fragile delicacy”, not only offering a haunting portrait of the dramatist as a young man – but also offers a quartet of superb parts that have been the cornerstones of many actors’ careers.” In Cape Town it has had an illustrious stage history, first being staged 70 years ago in 1949 at The Little Theatre directed by Leonard Schach. Meyer relates that Schach had been able to get the rights directly from Williams’s formidable agent Audrey Wood – the first foreign rights given anywhere in the world, thus putting South African theatre at the forefront of the world’s attention.
Thus its return to the boards means it will be making history when it comes to the intimate confines of the Artscape Arena from November 1-30.
Meyer says the play is set at the end of the depression in St Louis in the US. “It all takes place in a tiny apartment where three people are trapped and there’s something beyond that they are reaching for. Something they cannot achieve. That is the theme and the idea.”
He continues, “It’s real family drama – a family you have to love and hate and it resonates on so many levels. You have a misguided mother pushing for her children and her ideals for them and we can all see the guilt we carry for each other. Tom is bookended. The story is based on Williams’s own background so it’s personal and reflects his experience,” says Meyer.
Leading the star-studded cast of this year’s revival is Fiona Ramsay as Amanda Wingfield. Earlier this year, Ramsay picked up a Best Actress nomination at the Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards for her portrayal of another Williams heroine, The Princess Kosmonopolis in Sweet
Bird of Youth. Matthew Baldwin and Jenny Stead star as the siblings Tom and Laura Wingfield. Multiaward-winning Abrahamse is director and scenic designer.
Abrahamse is internationally regarded as a leading exponent on the work of Williams, having directed 12 of the playwright’s works on stages across the US and South Africa. Abrahamse’s long-time collaborators, Meyer and Faheem Bardien, join the creative team as costume and lighting designers, respectively.
Tickets are available at Computicket.