This is my second time seeing "The Glass Menagerie" (after the Belvoir production 12 years ago reviewed here). For this one, Geoffrey Borny moves back to the original text that was modified for the Broadway production, including slides with titles and images underlining key phrases and thoughts in the characters' heads. It's a play that is both told as a memory of Tom's and features characters reaching back for their glory days - whether Jim and Laura's remembrances of their early encounters in high school or Amanda's reveries of her glory days in the Old South (albeit ones which were clearly only glorious due to the availability of African-American servants). And it's about how the combination of memories of the past and hopes for the future can be painful, as neither are quite how you want them to be.
The framing device of Tom's reminiscences results in a peculiarly distant performance from Rob DeFries - he's never quite immersed with his fellow actors the way he should be - the concept of casting an older actor in the role is a good one theoretically in focussing on how the play is his reminiscences but it does mean that when he's sharing scenes with other characters, he's never entirely in-the-part. This means that the play tends to work more solidly when he's isolated monologuing on the porch or where scenes don't feature him - this is not necessarily a problem with DeFries as a performer so much as it's the conception of the role in this production - there's no particular tugging of him back into the family so much as a lot of pushing him out of it. Elsewhere, Victoria Tyrell-Dixon is a force of indomitable nature as the planning, driving Amanda, Jamie Johnston creates a figure of delicacy and vulnerability as Laura without ever being too easily pre-broken, and John Whinfield is a charmer as the gentleman caller who isn't quite aware what he's walking into and is even less aware what his departure leaves behind - not an insensitive clod so much as someone who just doesn't realise how much those around him have invested in his presence.
Craig Muller's lighting handles the candle-lit second-act sequence well, though around that there's some lapses here and there between areas meaning shaded patches show up where they shouldn't. Sarea Coates' set creates a tight space for the family to gather with a substantial balcony area for Tom to retreat to. Nev Pye mixes like an old-style Hollywood epic on a rich soundtrack.
"The Glass Menagerie" is a rich classic that still speaks to today in its heartbreaking tale of past-present-and-future-hopes, and this production is a strong evocation of that classic material.
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