Honolulu Weekly

The Glass Menagerie / A delicate piece, fragile, haunting, simultaneously concealing and revealing, powerful and devastating, uplifting in an odd sense—that humans will suffer yet survive, but at a cost—Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is a distinctly American play. Here in colonial Hawaii, we don’t often have shots fired across our existential bows by the canon of American dramatic literature, but if you yourself would care to wake up more aware of your own inner world, here in Williams’ most personal play is the powder to ignite that journey.

The Glass Menagerie opens this week at the Paul and Vi Loo Theatre at Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) for a one-month run, under Joyce Maltby’s direction. “It was about time I did a Williams,” Maltby concedes. “He’s a great playwright. He writes about the truth of life, the pain, what theater is really all about. He can reach us at that gut level of what we can all identify with.”

As in a Chekhov play, not much of anything happens in the exterior world of The Glass Menagerie: a young man, Tom, dreams of moving onward from his unhappy life in a St. Louis tenement. He lives with his dominating mother, Amanda, a woman who still holds onto the dreams of her Southern belle youth. His sister, Laura, dreams her own dreams, eccentric and personal. She is a “cripple,” physically and emotionally, still doting upon Jim, a boy from high school who was kind to her. Jim happens to be a colleague of Tom’s and one night, the young gentleman comes to call….

The interior world of The Glass Menagerie is something else entirely, and like eating fugu or venturing onto the H-1, it’s the complexity of the tasting, of the journey, that gives the meaning and depth—that satisfactory smacking of lips or the relieved wiping of a brow at the end which signifies that one has experienced something singular and survived—a brush with obliteration provoking a strange aesthetic pleasure, something like relief, terror and wonder all mixed.

In theatrical lore, Williams initially saw The Glass Menagerie as Laura’s play, basing her character on his younger sister Rose. Rose suffered from schizophrenia, though Williams changed that into a physical disability for Laura Wingfield. What happened later on Broadway is the stuff of legend—Laurette Taylor, an aging, alcoholic actress, took on the role of Amanda Wingfield, the mother, and with that role changed The Glass Menagerie into Amanda’s play.

Taylor’s performances, ending just a few months before her death in 1946, also changed the lives of a whole generation of actors who saw her perform.

“She was mesmerizing,” says Gena Rowlands. “She was unforgettable,” says Uta Hagen. “That was the greatest performance I’ve ever seen in all my life,” gushes Patricia Neal.

Tennessee Williams wrote of Taylor, “I feel now—as I have always felt—that a whole career of writing for the theatre is rewarded enough by having created one good part for a great actress.”

The role of Amanda remains one of the most challenging for an actress, and one of the most sought after. Maltby finally cast local actress and director Eden-Lee Murray in the role, a role which Murray had performed more than 10 years ago for another local production. Rounding out the four-hander cast is Rob Duval as Tom, Elitei Tatafu, Jr. as Jim, and HPU student Madeline Ruhl as Laura. A side note: years ago, Maltby, too, had played the role of Amanda at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, under the direction of Professor Edward Langhans.

Maltby intends to stay as true to the Broadway original as she can.

“The thing is, to me, if you can be honest to this play, then it’s there. It’s beautiful. All we need to do is be truthful to it,” Maltby says.

Costuming is by Peggy Krock, set by Karen Archibald, lighting by Janine Myers, and sound by Kevin Craven.