Friday, October 17, 2008
Playhouse's "Menagerie" Proves Timely
Posted on Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 4:00 AM
"Their eyes had failed them or they had failed their eyes," Tom says. And, as a result of this colossal vision crisis, Americans were "having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy."
Elsewhere there was revolution, Tom says. Back home there was only shouting and confusion.
Williams' first hit premiered in Chicago in 1944 and has as much to say to audiences anticipating a Depression today as it did to WWII-era audiences revisiting "that quaint period of the 1930s."
Menagerie's director Miles Potter, a University of Memphis alum who now works and resides in Canada, has coaxed exceptional, energetic work from his actors. For the most part, he has delivered a glowing, emotionally honest, and painfully sympathetic vision of Williams' American grotesque that moves along at a comfortable pace without losing any of the play's dreamier qualities. But for all of its charm, this Glass Menagerie isn't everything it could be. ...
Read the rest of Chris Davis' review here.
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