Let me start
by saying that The Glass Menagerie is quite simply my favourite
script of all time. Like all Tennessee Williams' great works, it is
infused with heartbreaking sadness, its tragedy being not so much around
the corner as simply there the whole time in plain sight - even as characters
and audience subconsciously convince themselves they cannot see or feel
it. Those of his works I have read or seen have been finely crafted:
indeed, just like the pieces of glass in this play, they are fragile
things of great and simple beauty. The Glass Menagerie, in
particular, resonates because of how Tom feels trapped by the duty he
owes to his family - having to support his dependent, single mother
and his shy, crippled sister while at the same time wanting to be free
to live his own life as a writer. He sees in his sister both a great
love and a great burden; and in his father who abandoned the family
both a role model and the last thing he ever wants to be. That is a
tension that many of us can relate to, especially in our culture where
family ties bind so tightly that they can sometimes strangle.
I Theatre's version of this modern masterpiece disappoints because
the much-ballyhooed translocation of the story from Depression-era America
to post-war Singapore and the re-imagining of the family as Eurasian
made no real attempt to achieve anything and merely served as a justification
for the mixed race cast. The impact of the change was minimal (a few
cultural references here and there) when it could have been poignant
instead. This, however, was still not the most disappointing aspect
of the production.
What really let the script down was the very pedestrian and uninspired
approach that director Paul Falzon took for this staging. Everything
was by-the-numbers; there was nothing that I considered particularly
perceptive or imaginative in his direction. The whole production just
chugged along at an even pace and the emotional climaxes felt perfunctory.
The cast seemed to have turned up on the night, said their lines and
then (I presume) gone home. I was left feeling that I would have had
a more satisfying emotional experience just sitting at home reading
the script and dreaming up the whole thing in my head.
Even the set design was not well thought out. Care had clearly gone
into picking items of deep brown furniture that captured the mood of
the era but this attention to detail was discordant with the fact that
the set consisted only of the items that were required by the script
and not a jot more. The set thus seemed curiously half-formed even as
effort had clearly been made to try and get things right. This problem
was exacerbated by the use of black stage curtains rather than flats
to form the walls of the apartment, bringing me back instantly to the
days of hobbled-together school plays. Another problem was the image
of actor Gerald Chew hanging in the middle of the room; yes, the script
called for a photograph of the runaway father centrestage but it worried
me that neither set designer nor director realised the distracting inappropriateness
of using a "celebrity" face. Chew was even credited in the cast list.
If it was meant to be a joke, it wasn't funny.
The actors were generally competent but again, brought no real excitement
(or indeed, chemistry) to the production. Tennessee Williams' plays
are high melodramas - think of Marlon Brando shouting "Stelllahhhhh!"
in A Streetcar Named Desire. There is no reason to be coy.
Christina Sergeant as Amanda, the matriarch, did try to lift the play
but there was only so much she could do without creating too extreme
a gap between her performance and the more low-key ones from Emilie
Oehlers and Timothy Nga (playing the siblings Tom and Laura). In the
end, Sergeant was much more successful than the other two at drawing
in the audience but still did not give her role the size it needed.
Neither Oehlers nor Nga delivered performances that got under your skin
despite their best efforts and Nga was not helped by the fact that he
looked more like a model off the cover of Men's Health than
the down-and-out, disillusioned young factory worker he was supposed
to be. Paul Hannon as the gentleman caller who brings false hope (is
there any other kind in Williams' work?) of security to Amanda and love
to Laura was unsteady. He overplayed the comedy in quite a few places
but, to be fair, his comic touch was well-handled in others and this
added a nice change of tone.
His performance at least showed thought, which was something I felt
the director had not sufficiently engaged in. I left the theatre that
evening feeling not so much as if I had seen as bad production as simply
a pointless one. The script definitely deserved a full-bodied treatment
instead of this lacklustre affair. |
"I was left feeling that I would have had a more satisfying emotional
experience just sitting at home reading the script and dreaming up the
whole thing in my head"
Credits
Director: Paul Falzon
Producer: Brian Seward
Production / Stage Manager: Goh Min Li
Set Design: Purpink Chung
Lighting Design: Suven Chan
Sound Design: Stephanie Kwok
Costume Design: Joanne Ng
Lighting Operator: Fiona Lim
Sound Operator: Goh Min Li
Cast: Timothy Nga, Christina Sergeant, Emilie Oehlers
and Paul Hannon
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From: The Editor (matthewlyon@myway.com / Saturday, May 27, 2006 at 22:59:10)
Got anything to say about the review or the production? Click the button above to let us know.
From: Samantha Carr (samcarr30@excite.com / Sunday, May 28, 2006 at 22:15:25)
Thank you for your review Mr Kwok. I wonder if you and I watched the same play. I thought this version of Glass Menagerie was good. While the production is not wow, it was not a stinker either and I have seen some seriously overpriced, overhyped rubbish in local theatre. I watched this play after I read another review in the local papers which didn't like the production. I think critics, whether you are theatre or film critics are so jaded that you maybe can't tell what the general -in this case- non theatre people- will like or dislike. As part of my future reference if I read a negative review from a critic such as yourself, I will make it a point to watch the production.
From: Kenneth (bluekei@yahoo.com / Sunday, May 28, 2006 at 22:46:07)
We will have to agree to disagree but I sincerely thank you for writing in. The whole point of the Readers' Comments section is to create a platform for people to share their (inevitably) different views. I actually know someone who hated the production much more than I did (just as you liked it clearly more than I) and felt I wasn't harsh enough ... but I stand by my assessment dspite being attacked from both fronts! :)
From: Tim Nga (timjn@pacific.net.sg / Monday, May 29, 2006 at 05:13:31)
Dear Kenneth. Thank you for the kind compliment. I didn't know down and out factory workers weren't allowed to be good looking.
BTW, a period of my life was a lot like Tom's situation in the sense of being stuck in an environment I did not fit into, and having people distrust me because I looked, thought or talked differently, or held different values to the norm within that environment.
Looks never helped me fit in. Sometimes it didn't matter. Sometimes it made things worse. Did people regard me with suspicious hostility? Definitely.
If I was playing a 50 year old balding man, then yes my looks would be a problem. (I probably wouldn't be cast in the first place). I don't think it applies to Tom Wingfield. :-)
From: Kenneth (bluekei@yahoo.com / Monday, May 29, 2006 at 08:44:51)
Again, thanks for responding. I agree - there's no reason that Tom (or factory workers in general) can't be good-looking or that good looks can't work against someone. But personally I just felt it didn't work for this particular character in this particular context. Now if you are talking about Brick (Cat On A Hot Tin Roof) or Chance ("Sweet Bird of Youth"), that would have been different :) Also, I wasn't just talking about the physical features but also the way the body was carried, the costume / make-up etc.
From: Daniel Toyne (aschenbac@hotmail.com / Monday, May 29, 2006 at 10:09:02)
Dear Kenneth:
Like you, TGM is avery favourite text of mine, and this was far from a perfect production (could there ever be one?) yet I felt there were a couple of key moments which made it a worthwhile evening in theatre ~ Tom's late return from the magic show; the Jim & Laura scene. The last speech brought me to tears.
Primarily I thought it showed pretty good performances in the face of unfocused direction and the foolish red-herring of the Eurasian setting (including the clumsy rewriting of the opening monologue). Me? I'm old-fashioned, the last Singapore production (with Adrian Pang) which included the original Elia Kazan production slides and music was more my cup of tea. Yet this version was not totally without merit. Being brought to tears is always worth $25:)
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