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OCTOBER 2017 — BALTIMORE BEACON
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Style Arts &
Piano “campers� learn to improvise in the jazz lab at Peabody. See cover story, continued on page 24.
Strong performances in fragile Menagerie Glass prisons Every character in Williams’ tragedy is one who is trapped — by circumstance, by familial duty, by memory. The beating heart of the play is the Wingfield family matriarch, Amanda, played with great aplomb by Lynda McClary, with whom this writer had the opportunity to work as an actor in 2012, when she directed The Iceman Cometh at Fells Point Corner Theater. McClary proves herself an individual of many talents, whether on stage or in the director’s chair. She crafts a powerful portrait of a fallen Southern belle, a role a lesser actor could easily let slip into caricature. Whether flitting across the stage in full Scarlett O’Hara mode as she reminisces about her “17 gentleman callers,� or suffering ennui at the foot of her “long-distance loving� husband’s portrait, or standing toe to toe with her recalcitrant son and fighting waves of desperation at the unfathomable riddle that is her daughter, McClary’s Amanda is, above all, a survivor. Despite the emotional maelstrom about her, she remains pragmatic and perse-
PHOTO BY SHEALYN JAE PHOTOGRAPHY
By Dan Collins On the surface, it would seem that Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is out of step with our modern, take-charge, do-it-yourself times. A young woman, suffering from a permanent limp, lives like a hot house plant in a self-made purgatory. Meanwhile, her mother sees men as walking financial plans. Isn’t that sexist? Tom, the soon-to-be-prodigal son, seems like a stereotype of the slacker who, when he isn’t off playing his 1930s version of Xbox (going to the movies every night), is mansplaining to both audience and family alike, while the “gentleman caller� Jim is a prequel to The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. So why is a play that debuted 73 years ago being performed today by the Vagabond Players in downtown Baltimore (and being enthusiastically received, if the audience I witnessed is any indication)? Because Williams’ work transcends time as a graceful, poignant tale of human needs denied — love, freedom, ambition, a parent’s hope for her children. These are as vital and important now as they were nearly three-quarters of a century ago.
Laura (Anna Steuerman), usuallly a shy recluse, dances with her gentleman caller, Jim (Flynn Harne), in the Vagabond Players’ production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.
veres. Taking her seat by the living room phone like a soldier at her post, she warms to the task of telemarketer — using her charm to coax women into renewing magazine subscriptions. The Glass Menagerie is a play where every character could be cast in the role of Tantalus in the famed Greek myth, each
“oh, so close� to getting what they want — that which could save and satiate their spirits almost within reach — only to watch it fall from their grasp and shatter, like Laura’s glass unicorn.
See GLASS MENAGERIE, page 25
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