Word: wingfields
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...haunting, African-influenced chant. Director Lloyd Richards needs to tinker with the ending, a sort of exorcism in which a sudden shift from farce to horror does not quite work. But already the musical instrument of the title is the most potent symbol in American drama since Laura Wingfield's glass menagerie...
...casting would have aroused excitement on Broadway. Joanne Woodward as Amanda Wingfield, the desperate matriarch. Karen Allen, star of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Starman, as the soulful daughter Laura. TV Star James Naughton (Trauma Center, Planet of the Apes) as Laura's "gentleman caller." And John Sayles, filmmaker (Return of the Secaucus Seven) and novelist (Union Dues), making his professional stage debut as Tom, the restless, seething son who narrates Tennessee Williams' doom-struck "memory play" about his family. Add a designer who has won a Tony nomination, a director who has mounted more than 100 productions...
What this poetic approach too often misses is Williams' deft and impish sense of humor. The Glass Menagerie is autobiography in the form of a situation comedy. The first half of the play could be called "Mama's Family": Amanda Wingfield, a fiftyish matron whose husband abandoned her 15 years earlier, plots to find a "gentleman caller" who will support her and marry her shy, lame daughter Laura. In the second half, a young man does call-no gentleman, rather an awkward go-getter whose own glory days are long past-and a bittersweet romance flutters through...
...good or ill, the current Broadway revival brings Williams down to earth. This time the moonbeams are paved with asphalt. Though Designer Ming Cho Lee has buttressed the Wingfield's St. Louis home with fleecy clouds, he has furnished it in a sturdy naturalistic style. Director John Dexter has paced the play to move one resolute step at a time, and encouraged the actors to deliver their lines with clarion force. This is a "solid" production, but it should be buoyant. The Wingfields imbibe a kind of emotional helium; only the guy wires of propriety keep them from floating...