A modern but moving Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester) Verdict: Clever update of a classic ★★★★
AN ELDERLY couple walked out within ten minutes of the start of this radical makeover of Tennessee Williams’ saddest and most autobiographical play about his disabled sister and anxious mother.
But if you give the benefit of the doubt to Atri Banerjee’s production starring Geraldine Somerville, it will reward your faith handsomely.
Rosanna Vize’s set is the first thing to balk at. There is none of the usual murky period clutter. Instead, we have a glossy white institutional floor with the feel of a psychiatric day room.
Nor is the mother (Somerville) the usual domestic psycho. Dressed in greyishpink blouse and skirt, she has a ghostly look and haunts the stage as a single woman, desperate to save her children from the lifetime of regret that has afflicted her.
Rhiannon Clements as her daughter, Laura, is similarly wounded rather than disturbed, and has retreated into a private silo of fragile hope, symbolised by her titular trinkets.
Joshua James, as her brother Tom, is weighed down with guilt and the need to escape — but also shows great love and tenderness. All of which raises the stakes for Eloka Ivo as the gentleman caller they hope might rescue Laura.
Giles Thomas’s music is no less haunting — sometimes a long single tone, at others a whisper of cello. But there is also the jolting anachronism of Whitney Houston’s One Moment In Time in a climactic fantasy of escape. It sharply updates the play and saves it from gathering dust as a comfortable antique.
Some may consider it vandalism. I could have been one, but I wasn’t. I left greatly moved.