Reflective: The Glass Menagerie at Ford’s Theatre (review)
Ford's Theatre stages a resonant Tennessee Williams classic
Thomas Keegan stands taller than everyone else — literally and figuratively — in the production of The Glass Menagerie now at Ford’s Theatre.
Keegan is playing Jim O’Connor, Laura’s “Gentleman Caller,” in Tennessee Williams’s classic play, and against all odds, we pin our hopes on Jim as the savior of Laura Wingfield, a slightly disabled, horribly shy young woman, who is also pretty, pure and sweet.
Williams’s sideways tribute to a real-life sister, The Glass Menagerie (
) is the type of play you warm up to. It’s the type of play we see shades of ourselves in and other people in our lives. The play doesn’t truly come to life until the tete-a-tete with Jim and Laura at the conclusion.
Director Mark Ramont has assembled a solid cast, led by Madeleine Potter as the domineering, dispirited matriarch Amanda. Jenna Sokolowski effectively portrays Laura as the fragile unicorn eager to shed her horn, thinking naively that will make her feel like the rest of the equines in her glass collection. Tom Story adds shades of creepy and aloofness to Tom, Laura’s realistic, if not exactly sympathetic, brother. The Glass Menagerie is every bit as much of a thinking play, at least when staged in the kind of reflective and resonant manner as Ramont has done here.
There’s little about Timothy R. Mackabee’s set — from the austere backdrop of a network of metal fire escapes to the small, old-fashioned living room — that provides a sense of warmth or comfort. And yet, it certainly has the look of home, or at least a home you’ve known. Equally familiar yet unsettling are Clint Allen’s projections of black and white family photographs — chiefly of the always-there, always-smiling father, who long ago left the family high and dry.
There’s a sense about the whole affair of history repeating itself and of anxieties becoming self-fulfilling. And yet we hold out hope for Laura until the bitter end. It’s the true marker of a powerful, compelling production. — Doug Rule
The Glass Menagerie runs to Feb. 21 at Ford’s Theatre, 511 10th St. NW. Tickets are $17 to $64. Call 800-982-2787 or visit fordstheatre.org.
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