In Pedro Almodovar’s ‘All About My Mother’ the heroine Manuela tells us that the stage play ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ has “marked” her life; I feel something similar about another of Tennessee Williams’ classic plays, ‘The Glass Menagerie’. I remember first reading the play for an English class at school; it struck me then as a straight up story of a parent interfering, manipulating, and ultimately ruining the lives of her children. My next encounter was as part of a university course taken abroad (in The Netherlands, of all places) when, in the throes of a shall we say bacchanalian awakening, the play revealed itself to be all about Tom, his late night trips to the movies and his eventual escape to the merchant marines clear indicators of a barely contained homosexual desire.
And now I have this brilliant Young Vic production which brings to the fore the hopeless ambitions of its characters, proving the play to be an immense tragedy of unfulfilled dreams. Or maybe, as with the other two times, I’m just seeing my own life reflected back at me. (Cue violins).
Director Joel Hill-Gibbons takes up Williams’ instruction for the play to be viewed as memory (and therefore not realistic) and right from the outset expressionist theatrical magic captivates. Tom, the self-proclaimed poet who works in a factory, conducts the action for our entertainment, a fact neatly illustrated by the on-stage musicians who also await his cues. He invites us into his shabby and claustrophobic apartment where he lives with his mother Amanda, and his shy, crippled sister Laura. They are introduced to us by appearing out of nowhere, conjured by Tom from thin air.
Played with a manic intensity that veered wildly from sympathetic to repugnant, Leo Bill’s Tom spares no one in his rendering of the events leading up to his escape with the merchant marines. Amanda (Deborah Findlay), the fading Southern Belle, is cast as a calculating, interfering nuisance. Laura (Sinead Matthews) is shy and quiet but also shown to be a liar with an unusual, almost unhealthy fascination with glass figurines. Even Jim, the gentleman caller who Tom says is meant to represent “reality” struck me as an omen of unfulfilled promise, his optimism and big plans sounding like pipe dreams torn from the mouth of Willy Loman in ‘Death of a Salesman.’
Good writing, they say, is all about the stakes for the characters. This could explain why there are so many detective, medical and legal dramas on television: what could be higher stakes than losing your liberty or dying? For these kinds of dramas the stakes are in-built and therefore an easy task for the writer to convey why something occurring in the drama is vital i.e. “If we don’t get the generator to work in the next five minutes, these patients will die.” But with an overabundance of these particular stakes, we become bored of them. Which is why it’s so pleasurable to find yourself in the hands of a master dramatist, like Williams, who presents us here with the pettiest, most trivial of stakes but makes you feel like we’re dealing with life and death. The climatic scene between Laura and Jim, where it seems that a romance may be kindled, with its exquisite structure and droplets of information left scattered around like time bombs, is played to perfection here. It is all the more heartbreaking because the characters want so little but are denied it anyway.
A great ensemble performance here and a powerful textural interpretation, realised with a beautiful set design. A must see for anyone who thinks they know this play.
Tags: All About My Mother, Death of a Salesman, Deborah Findlay, Joel Hill-Gibbons, Kyle Soller, Leo Bill, Pedro Almodovar, Sinead Matthews, Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Young Vic
