Word: playfulness
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Shifting shadows welcome the viewer to “The Glass Menagerie,” Tennessee Williams’ 1944 play about family and failure. Hung from the ceiling of the Loeb Experimental Theater, sewn plastic figures glisten against thick sheets of cloth. As the audience enters, the wonderful and mysterious sculpture—designed by Sara J. Stern ’12—sways and sighs. It looms over the neat and trim set and veils it with a hesitating shade...
Such shadows are the perfect introduction to Williams’ play, where the hopes of a St. Louis family shatter under a soft mist of melancholy. Their hazy promise is mostly carried through in this production, directed by Megan E. O’Keefe ’11. O’Keefe’s “Menagerie,” which runs through Feb. 27th, is well acted and well thought-out. If the show occasionally stumbles into melodrama, it is only because O’Keefe tries too hard to clarify details that could instead remain...
Giuliani, too, does a fine job of capturing Amanda’s fading beauty, though her fast talk makes her lines sometimes difficult to follow. When she intentionally slips into a Southern drawl halfway through the play, her performance improves greatly...
...Keefe craftily invites the viewer in. The seats are pulled in several feet from the wall, so that the Ex, already a small and snug performance space, here becomes even more intimate. When Jim and Laura share a charming dance toward the end of the play, the close setting makes the ethereal moment all the more fleeting...
...times, such efforts at intimacy tend toward the pedantic. Midway through the play’s intermission, Stark emerges from backstage and begins to toy with the hanging sculpture. Her inviting looks and teasing air seem to beckon viewers to play along. Some audience members joined in, but the rest of the room froze. It’s one thing to slip into Laura’s world, another to be dragged...