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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels October 28, 2004 Artattack looks through a glass lightly By Robert H. Miller Tidings Correspondent Tennessee Williams describes his 1944 play, "The Glass Menagerie," as "a memory play," and as such it is dimly lighted, sentimental and not realistic. Moreover, "in memory everything seems to happen to music." Some critics consider it Wiliams' finest play, even if it is one of his earlier works. Ashland's Artattack Theatre Ensemble, under the direction of Justin C. Lockwood, promises us a reimagined and innovative version of this American classic that opens Nov. 5 at its theater on Oak Street. One bold move is that the role of Tom is here played by two actors: the older Tom is the nostalgic narrator or commentator, the younger the actual participant in the action. This enables us to see the man he was and the man he has become. Another conception is that the set and costumes are entirely white, creating the effect of a blank canvas on which the audience can project the images as described by Williams in his beautiful stage directions that are added to the older Tom's lines. There are autobiographical connections. Tennessee Williams is embodied in Tom, his mother Edwina in Amanda, and his sister Rose, sickly and having a glass collection, in Laura. These are the play's Wingfields, and the Gentleman Caller who comes to visit Laura is Jim O'Connor. Act I is concerned with preparations for the Caller, Act II with the call itself. The scene set in our imagination is an alley in St. Louis, with the shoddy Wingfield apartment in the rear of a building. The time is now and in the past. Amanda, herself trapped in time, is living the myth of a southern belle in Blue Mountain. She prevails on her son Tom to bring a gentleman home to his crippled sister Laura, in hopes of getting her married. The son desperately wants to escape from the stifling atmosphere at home and to quit his stultifying warehouse job and to follow the call of the sea and join the merchant marines. As for his sister, painfully shy, she finds solace in her collection of glass animals. So Tom does bring a gentleman home for dinner, and Laura opens up like a flower in his presence, only to be crushed. It is powerful and poignant theatre. "The Glass Menagerie" opened at the Player's Theatre in New York in 1945 and ran for 561 performances. It is claimed that William Inge came to see the play and was so moved by the experience that he decided to become a playwright, too. Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) entered the University of Missouri in 1929, living for a time in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house, but left after two years, unable to pay his way. After graduating from the University of Iowa, where he studied dramatic writing, he worked as a bell hop in New Orleans, a handyman in a shoe factory (Tom's job in the play), a teletypist with a corps of engineers in Florida, and a waiter and reciter of verse in a Greenwich Village night club. Throughout, he wrote assiduously, mostly for the stage. Justin C.Lockwood's cast features Artattack ensemble members - Linda Otto (Amanda) and Dale Nakagawa (the Gentleman Caller), and newcomers to Artattack, Doug Mitchell (the older Tom), Adam Cuppy (the younger Tom), and Nicole Strykowski (Laura). Performances of "The Glass Menagerie" are on Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays at 8.00 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2.00 p.m. through December 6 except on November 22, 26, 27, 28, 29. And as an antidote to the Menagerie melacholia, Artattack is offering a staged reading on Sundays at 8.00 p.m. of Christopher Durang's parody entitled "For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls." For information: 482-6505. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams