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Review
Menagerie of actors gives play life
The two women's characters in particular create a lasting impression of Banyan Theater's production of The Glass Menagerie.
By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published July 8, 2005
The Glass Menagerie is perhaps the most familiar of Tennessee Williams' plays, beloved of literature instructors for its transparently teachable symbolism and clear structure.
It's narrated by Tom Wingfield, Williams' nostalgic stand-in, but the play's heart is with the women he leaves behind. In Banyan Theater Company's production, directed by Kent Paul, those women take the spotlight.
As Amanda Wingfield, the original queen of denial, Sharon Spelman chews up the scenery, and that's a compliment. Amanda is a theatrical character in more ways than one, a woman who cedes center stage to no one, even her beloved children.
A spoiled Southern belle who married a man who worked for the telephone company and "fell in love with long distance," Amanda has struggled ever since he abandoned the family. Her defense mechanism is to live in the past, while son Tom chooses the future, working in a warehouse and plotting escape.
The responsibility they bear but never speak of honestly is daughter Laura, who is handicapped physically and mentally and cannot live on her own. The play's conflict grows from Amanda and Tom's battle over how to provide for her - and free themselves.
Spelman, a member of the Asolo Theatre Company, captures Amanda's brittle complexity, turning on a dime from an airy flirtation to a self-centered tirade, and then again to genuine warmth.
She nails the physical graces Amanda would have learned as a girl - the ramrod spine, the gracefully lifted chin, the primly crossed ankles - without making them a caricature.
Sarah Stockton shapes Laura with silences and stillness, almost whispering many of her lines. Her soft, almost childlike features underline Laura's inability to step into adulthood, yet Stockton also gives her a gentle dignity.
As Tom, Mark Thornton conveys a young man's restlessness and longing for experience. But he seems so warm and playful in some of his scenes with Amanda that his anger in others is less than convincing, and it's that anger that should power the leap he must make at the play's end.
Brit Whittle is a hearty but not entirely clueless gentleman caller, a younger and less bitter counterpart to Amanda, still replaying his glory days.
Marty Petlock's delicate lighting serves the story well, and Richard Cannon's graceful scenic design gives form to the Wingfields' genteel poverty. Cassandra Mockosher's costumes accent the relationship between mother and daughter: Middle-aged Amanda dresses like a young woman, 20-something Laura like a child.
Banyan's new venue, the Glenridge Performing Arts Center at Palmer Ranch, is south of the company's former homes, but the theater boasts great acoustics, and it's about five minutes from the Clark Road exit of Interstate 75.
Colette Bancroft can be reached at 727 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com
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The Glass Menagerie, 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through July 17. Glenridge Performing Arts Center, 7333 Scotland Way, corner of Honore Avenue and Palmer Ranch Parkway, Sarasota. $27.50. 941 552-5325; www.banyantheatercompany.com
[Last modified July 8, 2005, 01:01:05]
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