By FRANCIS TILL
Menagerie is the most autobiographical of Tennessee Williams' plays, revealing much of his family life and paying homage to the tragic story of his infinitely fragile sister, Rose. It is a profoundly sentimental and highly stylised play, charged with dark, elemental and deeply ambiguous currents.
Not very much of
that comes through in this purposefully naive production, which moves on the surface of things, playing only cursory service to the more exotic elements of the text and giving us an almost forthright story about the permanence of memory and the challenges of hope.
The play is so well known that any successful new take on it will be welcome to most audiences.
But, despite occasional moments of brilliance in the performance itself, this particular production is diminished by director Heath Jones' approach. After years of work on the play, Williams finished it in 1944 and gave it a pre-war 1937 setting, something that has considerable potential to resonate in a world sliding into another global war.
That connection isn't explored, however, and even the powerful statements given to the narrator about the coming war are handled lightly. The use of a featureless American accent by most of the cast flattens too much of significance in the subtext.
Metaphors central to the play are also sometimes treated carelessly, which can be frustrating for audiences that know the work and misleading for those that do not. These are all choices directors can make, but something should be added for everything taken away, and this does not often happen.
That said, there are some exceptional performance moments that deserve a sophisticated audience. Perhaps the most outstanding comes from Anna Meech, as Laura, during a pivotal scene in which she soars on an unlikely kiss from a gentleman caller to ecstasy and then flows wonderfully back down to horror as she realises the kiss will never be repeated.
Darien Takle also provides an interesting take on the cloying mother, Amanda, the first of Williams' ubiquitous fading, fantasist southern belles, and Owen Black handles the narrator role with debauched elegance.
