And indeed. Tom's desire to leave, for example, feels far more selfish than ever before, because Gold and Mantello show us a man who when not at the movies is involved in his sister's daily exercises and care. This production makes "The Glass Menagerie" a story of abandonment; it turns Tom into a jerk of a loving brother, walking away from need into his own indulgence and a sea of guilt.
It is a characterization from which the removed Mantello, a man clearly not of Ferris' generation and who makes no pretensions otherwise, does not run.
When Wittrock's gentleman caller, a perky fellow here, talks about how he almost but did not quite remember his "Blue Roses," his motivations are called more readily into question inthe viewer's skull. For you would not forget Ferris' Laura without agency in her oblivion. Does this do violence to Williams' poetry or to his famous chronicling of ordinary, breakable people doing their best in difficult social and psychic circumstances? Perhaps to your mind and understandably so.
But not to mine. As the great Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy the woman who rescued this play from the wolves once observed on these pages, Williams was an Orpheus forever looking back, only on his own demons. It's just in this production, there is far, far more than usual in his rear-view mirror.
My head went from time to time to the experience of someone who never had seen the play — a legitimate worry, I think, given the trends of Broadway revival of American drama, and the same internal conversation often provoked in me by director Ivo Van Hove, by whom Gold clearly has been influenced.
What would a "Menagerie" newbie make of the empty stage, the sea of black paint, the rain that falls behind; the difficulty of these lives; the replacement of shadowy fragility with harder truth? That is open to question; but then Williams has passed into privileged poet's place of belonging to all, of falling in and out of context, and Gold has not permanently roiled the text. Most critics focused on the mischaracterizations of Amanda and Tom, Lange playing the matriarch too dreamy and Slater playing the son too masculine.
The production began previews on February 7 at the Belasco Theatre, and is set to open officially on March 9. Share Tweet Submit Pin. After experiencing Fleischmann's vision of this celebrated play, I would have a difficult time attending a classical staging of it.
A director elevating a playwright's work to something beyond the original conception in this manner showcases the best of theatre's collaborative nature.
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended. Hans Fleischmann developed a distinctive poetic vision for his production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, which ran for about six months in at Mary-Arrchie Theatre and then at Theater Wit. Fleischmann reprises this production as director and lead actor in the new Hypocrites production. Fleischmann as the narrator and poet Tom wanders in and out of time, in his homeless-man persona, as future Tom and past Tom.
Milwaukee Chicago. Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended " ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended " Chicago Stage Standard - Highly Recommended " NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended " Chicago Theater Beat - Recommended "
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