THEATER REVIEWS : A ‘Glass’ That’s Only Half Full

The gentle poetics of Tennessee Williams’ “Glass Menagerie” require loving care. American Classic Repertory’s revival of the play is halfway there.

Director Lee Clark has stated that his company would like to stage a Williams play every year. Especially considering the safer-than-safe revival policy of most theaters in Orange County, that kind of commitment is a very good thing.

Love, though, only gets you so far. Clark’s staging could do with a lot more care.

Clark has cast himself as young, struggling Tom Wingfield, Williams’ alter-ego, narrator and contentious son of Amanda Wingfield (Mary Benton). Clark suggests Tom’s acerbic bitterness, stuck as he is in a stifling household and itching to write and to travel the seven seas. But Clark is too old for the role by years, which sets off an odd imbalance in Williams’ painstakingly drawn family trio.

Joann Clark, as shy, isolated Laura Wingfield, also looks a tad mature to still be living with mom. With both siblings in this production, the play’s notion of adult children who can’t fly from the nest is pushed too far.

More critically, Joann struggles vainly with Laura’s sadly stunted personality, the kind so easily exploited for melodrama (which, thankfully, both Joann and Tom, as an actor as well as a director, studiously avoid. Even that potentially melodramatic symbol of Laura’s menagerie, of tiny glass animals, is made to blend into the uncredited set). With her flattened voice, Joann sounds less like a girl-woman, afraid of life in general, than she sounds like an actor intimidated by a role.

But Joann’s tentative quality and Lee’s miscasting both are contrasted by Benton, who is Williams’ kind of actor. With every line and every move, this Amanda teeter-totters between mother hen and sniping control freak. Benton makes the role’s extraordinary demands--of blending dictatorial instincts and womanly elegance--look easy. Even with occasional line flubbings, this is exactly the kind of performance that ensures that a classical program won’t drift into museum theater.

The other piece of casting, that of the so-called Gentleman Caller, is less fortunate. As Jim, Tom’s fellow warehouse worker who is matched for a date with homebody Laura, Randy Monte telegraphs the truth about his character far too early. Williams wants us to share at least a bit of Amanda’s hope that Jim will be the beau for her, but Monte’s smart-alecky approach cancels that out.

Williams, through Tom, proclaims that this is a memory play, dimly lit and not realistic. But Chris Conrad’s lights (until the very end) are bright, and the set’s props and furniture are realistic indeed. At American Classic Repertory, craft and depth of expression are lagging behind an admirable passion for literature. Call it growing pains.

*

“The Glass Menagerie,” American Classic Repertory, 23891 Via Fabricante, Suite 611, Mission Viejo. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 7. $6-$11. (714) 542-1306. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Lee Clark: Tom Wingfield

Mary Benton: Amanda Wingfield

Joann Clark: Laura Wingfield

Randy Monte: Jim O’Connor

An American Classic Repertory production of a play by Tennesee Williams, directed by Lee Clark. Lights: Chris Conrad.