Adelaide Reviews

Tennessee Williams is one of the foremost American playwrights of the 20th century. His first big success was The Glass Menagerie. This production by the State Theatre Company SA is certainly not its first, but it must be one of its biggest successes.

It is a brilliant performance from start to finish.

The playwright called this work a “memory play”, as it reflects his own family life, and also because it is introduced by Tom (narrator and important character) as being the events leading up to his attempt at liberating himself from the family. In writing it, Tennessee Williams has constructed a fractured family triangle of unrealised ambitions and aspirations.

Amanda (Ksenja Logos) is the disillusioned mother, deserted by her husband, making bold and unfortunate steps to wear a jolly facade, covering her disappointment with her lost past, and making ineffectual attempts to provide a financial stability for her two children, but becoming a controlling, exacting, demanding, over-bearing harridan, albeit with well-intentioned and rosy ambitions for her offspring.

Laura (Kathryn (Kitty) Adams) is the depressed and oppressed daughter with a slight limp, which, along with her sense of abandonment by her father, has left her ashamed, fearful and insecure. Needing protection from the world and from her family (in particular her mother's preoccupation with finding her a Gentleman Caller/husband), she finds solace in her precious collection of glass miniature animals. These are stupendously displayed as a pivotal part of the splendid set by Mark Thompson.

Tom (Laurence Boxhall) is the son and narrator, who clashes with his mother, protects his sister, and is the only wage earner in the family. He escapes with the use of drinking, writing poetry, and going to the movies a lot. He has ambitions to leave the family, and find himself as a member of the marine Navy, but his ambitions, like the aspirations of his mother, and his sister are private.

Into this, melee comes Jim O’Connor (Jono Darby) a mate of Tom’s, who is immediately latched onto by Amanda as a good, clean, iconic, nice man with a steady wage for her daughter. Laura discovers with panic that he was the boy she had a crush on at school. He attempts to build her self-confidence, and inevitably, they rediscover each other. But the happy ending doesn't happen, and fragile ambitions are shattered like one of the precious fragile glass animals.

Overshadowing all this action is an enormous portrait of the missing father, who we never meet, but whose presence, or lack of it, is there all the time. It is symbolic that the family members have to walk through him to undertake the tasks of daily life.

The acting throughout by this outstanding company is excellent. My only complaint would be that a number of lines from Ksenja Logos were lost in her accent and rapid delivery. Nevertheless, she, in particular, had some enormously long soliloquies, and she, and the other cast members who had similar length of lines to learn, mastered them brilliantly.

Not only is the acting and the set outstanding, the lighting by Gavin Norris deserves special mention. It is not often that realistic candlelight can be achieved on stage, but in this production, the effect of this very necessary part of the concluding part of the play achieved exactly that.

The entire cast, creative team, and State Theatre Company SA all deserve accolades for revisiting this 20th century classic in such excellent style.