Every now and then, Theater Latte Da ("we don't do musical theater we do theater musically") tries their hand to a play (e.g., their 2024 production of
Stones in His Pockets). This season, Artistic Director Justin Lucero has chosen Tennessee Williams' tragically beautiful and beautifully tragic play
The Glass Menagerie (which happens to be one of my favorite plays). Thankfully, Latte Da has not turned
The Glass Menagerie into a musical, but they have subtly infused it with music via live underscoring, as well as live video projections from onstage cameras. The result is perhaps the best realization of Williams' quintessential (and semi-autobiographical) memory play that I've seen. It's dreamy, and cinematic, and intimate, and nostalgic, and heartachingly beautiful. The innovative and risk-taking concept is gorgeously executed by the entire team, with a cast that is simply perfection.
Pay a call to the Wingfields now through March 1; you won't be disappointed, but you may feel pleasantly melancholic after the visit.
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| Tom (Dustin Bronson) with his camera (photo by Dan Norman) |
The Glass Menagerie is written as a memory play, with the character of Tom (a stand-in for Williams himself) opening the play speaking directly to the audience, sharing with us his memories of his mother and sister when they were all living together in a small apartment in St. Louis in the late 1930. In this production, Tom has a camera, as if the writer described in the play grew up to be a filmmaker, and he's making a film of his life story. Projections on the back wall of the theater tell us that this is a story "in eight memories," aka scenes, the title of each one projected as it begins. Tom sometimes observes the scene with his camera, focusing on Laura's hands twisting in her lap, or his mother's face, or the tiny and fragile glass animals that make up Laura's menagerie, mimicking the way that our memories can consist of oddly specific details, while other things are fuzzy or lost. Tom sets down his camera to step into some of the scenes, as the complicated family dynamic plays out: the fading Southern belle of a mother, living in the memories of her own past, the lost and driftless daughter who spends her days listening to the Victrola and attending to her glass menagerie, the restless son eager to leave his family and factory job and start his life somewhere else. Tom has left his home and family, as we know from the narrative framing of the story, but he's unable to leave his sister behind.
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Tom (Dustin Bronson) recording Laura (Amy Eckberg)
and his mother (Norah Long, photo by Dan Norman) |
Fresh off his first (but likely not last)
TCTB Award, Justin Lucero directs the play with a unique vision, clearly and effectively realized with help from the design. The incorporation of live (and some recorded) video is used judiciously and thoughtfully; it doesn't overwhelm the traditional theater elements, but only adds to it. Seeing characters in extreme close-up gives us greater insight into them, especially with this talented cast that is performing both for the camera and for the audience, artfully balancing the two. The way that Tom steps into and out of scenes is also thoughtfully done. The Wingfield apartment is framed in neon strips outlining the literal floorplan, and Tom is the only one who steps outside of it; the rest of his family are forever trapped inside his memory. Inside the frame of the house are a few pieces of period furniture, different areas of the house lit as Tom's, and our, attention shifts to them.
The live underscoring is performed by cast member Brandon Brooks, who is only in one scene, on sound bowls and water glasses other ethereal instruments and sound-makers. The live sound blends seamlessly with other sound design elements, including music coming from the Victrola, and amplified echoing dialogue slowly become clear and realistic, adding to the memory effect. And the absence of the soundscape, during the gentleman caller scene that also features projections from an overhead camera, creates a silence that is just as effective. Characters are dressed in modest period clothing in muted colors, with the exception of Amanda's floofy Southern belle dress she pulls out of storage. (Scenic design by Joe Thomas Johnson, video and projections design by Adam J. Thompson, sound design and original music by Katharine Horowitz, lighting design by Marcus Dilliard, costume design by Amber Brown).
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Laura (Amy Eckberg) with her gentleman caller (Brandon Brooks)
(photo by Dan Norman) |
The four-person cast is excellent, each one perfectly cast for their role. In his Theater Latte Da debut, Dustin Bronson gives a beautiful performance as Tom, both as the older version observing his family through his camera with palpable love and painful regret, and as the younger version within the scenes, chafing at the constrictions of the mundane life. Recent U of M/Guthrie BFA grad Amy Eckberg is so lovely as Laura, quiet and delicate but with so much going on inside, that we get to see in close-up. Brandon Brooks, who grew up on the Children's Theatre stage, is so natural and confident and without artifice as Jim, the gentleman caller, totally believable as the genial popular kid everyone loves. Last but definitely not least, #TCTheater favorite Norah Long is an absolute gem as Amanda, so funny and tragic, dramatic and devastating, as this woman who loves her children dearly but doesn't quite know how to. Each one of these four performances is so precise and specific, and fit together so neatly.
The Glass Menagerie is such a beautiful play, with timeless themes about memory, family, obligation, the "long delayed but always expected something that we live for," woven together with William's lyrical dialogue. As Tom says at the beginning of the play, theater is "truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." And in the hands of director Justin Lucero with this cast and creative team, this Menagerie clearly illuminates the truth, with some exceedingly pleasant and uniquely effective illusion.
