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An Intimate, Affecting Glass Menagerie

By Melody Udell in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 12, 2012 5:30PM

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Hans Fleischmann as the troubled Tom Wingfield in Mary-Arrchie's The Glass Menagerie. Photo by Freddie Bledsoe.

Chicago is no stranger to the familiar Tennesee Williams play The Glass Menagerie. The current incarnation put on by The Mary-Arrchie Theater Company is the third production of Williams’ iconic memory play just this year — Redtwist Theatre and the Steppenwolf both put on worthy productions over the summer. But thanks largely to the commendable cast and creative scenic design, the intimate, unpolished show taking place in the cozy Angel Island Theater manages to be the most affecting version yet.

Williams seems to know all too well that “time is the longest distance between two places.” Yet his deeply personal play — rumored to be somewhat autobiographical — has a satisfying amount of dark humor to balance out the heartbreak, due in large part to director Hans Fleischmann, who also plays the narrator, Tom Wingfield.

Tom is now a bitter drunkard, haunted by the events in his past, and uses his recollections to tell his story to the audience. He introduces his mother, Amanda (Maggie Cain), whose husband fled years ago, leaving her with only their two children and her well-worn memories of a youth spent entertaining admirers on her family’s Mississippi plantation. Tom’s sister, Laura (Joanne Dubach), is a few years older yet without a job or schooling — her torturously shy nature and acute physical disability keep her from leaving the family’s cramped St. Louis apartment.

With a spot-on Southern accent, Cain shows us an Amanda who’s tenacious in her attempt to improve the family’s future, although her misguided methods don’t get her very far. She’s constantly nagging Tom to do better at work so he can bring home more money, blatantly unappreciative that he’s the family’s only breadwinner. Meanwhile, she tries encouraging Laura to bring home suitors, but Laura only further retreats into herself, dropping out of school and spending her days meticulously caring for her cherished glass collection. Dubach is perfectly cast as the fragile Laura — each crushing expression shows us how eager she is to please her mother, though she knows she never will.

When Tom brings home former high school legend Jim (Walter Briggs), his only friend at the warehouse where they both work, Laura is finally brought to life. And appropriately, so is the stage. Set designer Grant Sabin uses the Wingfield’s drab apartment, littered with glass bottles and long-forgotten relics, to set a glowing tone for when Tom and a reluctant Laura get to know each other. Not surpringly, the show’s use of a projector screen didn’t have the desired affect (projectors rarely do). But the rest of the set — including the oversized portrait of the long-gone Wingfield patriarch, solidifies the not-so-silent resentment that took his place.

The Glass Menagerie may be a familiar piece for the Chicago stage, but this deeply affecting production is well worth another exploration of Williams’ most haunting work.

The Glass Menagerie plays now through Jan. 20, 2013 at Mary-Arrchie Theatre, 735 W. Sheridan Rd.