In Amanda Wingfield -- Daughters of the American Revolution stalwart, magazine telemarketer, mother to Tom and Laura, lethal blend of Miss Havisham and Jocasta -- Tennessee Williams has the last word on Southern mamas. Projecting her disappointments and failed ambition onto her poetic son and sad, super-sensitive daughter Amanda is the raging, jonquil-clutching epicenter of Williams’ most heartbreaking tragedy, “The Glass Menagerie.”
The final installment of Georgia Shakespeare’s economically turbulent 2011 season, director Richard Garner’s “Glass Menagerie” is a testament to the majesty and meaning of theater, to the words of Williams and the frayed, fragile chord that knots mothers and children everywhere. Whatever happens to Georgia Shakespeare, which is about two-thirds of the way into a $500,000 emergency campaign to keep the theater alive, this production will remain in the heart as one of the most shattering theatrical moments on record in this city.
With a pitch-perfect cast, a handsome design scheme that harks backs to Williams’ intent to project “magic-lantern” slides onto a screen, it is the most essential drama produced in Atlanta this year. When time slows down so that Laura (Bethany Anne Lind) becomes lost and arrested in her imaginary world of crystalline animals, when Tom (Joe Knezevich) weeps at the thought of abandoning his tender sister, when Amanda (Mary Lynn Owen) is transfigured into her former girlish self in the presence of The Gentleman Caller (Travis Smith), you know you are in the presence of one superbly eloquent ensemble.
At the preview performance I caught, I did have a little trouble hearing Tom’s opening monologue over the roar of what sounded like air-conditioner fans. I also felt that Knezevich was just a little self-conscious in grasping the cadences of Tom’s Southern-flavored accent. But this remarkable actor quickly finds his way as the hard-drinking moviegoer who will be banished by his mother’s violence and cruelty. “I think you’ve been doing things that you’re ashamed of. That’s why you act like this,” Amanda rails viciously at Tom.
Lind, who has proven herself again and again as a young actress of remarkable versatility, goes off the charts in her approximation of the emotionally paralyzed Laura, who we know was modeled on Williams’ own sister. Swept away in the whimsy of her unicorn ballet and later stricken with asthmatic panic at the thought of answering the knock of her caller, Lind’s account of Laura’s agony is devastating.
Smith’s wide-grinning Jim O’Connor is, for a moment at least, an antidote to the blue roses and melancholia. Jim is delighted by Amanda’s appearance in her ballerina-shepherdess gown with the blue sash and though he has no words to express his response, Smith does it all with eyes and gestures. He is sweetly moonstruck by the sheer excess of Amanda’s personality and slow to realize the depth of Laura’s immersion in her menagerie. Short-lived though it may be, it’s the finest performance I have seen from Smith.
The play is cushioned by top-notch design, lighting and sound. Composer Kendall Simpson contributes lovely, crisp and evocative incidental music. Kat Conley installs a smartly symbolic set that frames the Wingfield living room in a border of panels that shimmers like fractured glass. Costume designer Sydney Roberts dresses Tom in period peacoats and Amanda in a procession of matronly garments and clunky ’40s shoes that are back in vogue today.
And Owen inhabits it all like a second skin. If only the telephone sales pitches of today could convey the sympathy and wit of Amanda, who hawks magazines out of desperation and panic, yet always remembers to mention her client’s medical conditions. (“You’re a Christian martyr, yes, honey, that’s what you are, a Christian martyr!”)
Amanda wears many masks, but the most mesmerizing one is for the gentleman caller. Her voice changes into a syrupy Southern drawl; her giggles become awkwardly nervous paroxysms, desperate and pathetic. Owens isn’t just another dependable Atlanta trouper. She’s the crème de la crème, a superb comedian with a very poignant edge. If this isn’t a performance of a lifetime, I don’t know what is.
In his curtain speech, Garner assured audience members and contributors that Georgia Shakespeare is back from the brink, that the words of Williams and Shakespeare just have "to go on in our community." His truthful, triumphant "Glass Menagerie" makes an excellent case that he's absolutely right. I am in awe.
Theater review
“The Glass Menagerie”
Grade: A
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 30. $15-$45. Georgia Shakespeare, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta 404-264-0020, gashakespeare.org
Bottom line: Exquisite.
