The word that stuck out to me after seeing The Glass Menagerie with Amy Adams was “impersonal.” Memory should feel incredibly intimate and present no matter how much time has passed and how hazy that specific event has become. It sneaks up on you, it sparks emotion that you can’t explain, and it stays with you longer than you want it to. Unfortunately, this particular production of The Glass Menagerie, in my opinion, did little to capture that feeling. This production divided the role of Tom into two parts: older Tom, the narrator, and younger Tom, which could have been really effective. Yet, many of my classmates noted that they didn’t find older Tom’s delivery believable. I think, for me, the problem with Paul Hilton’s delivery was that it felt like a stereotype of what a writer in 1940’s America might look like: glasses, cigarette in hand, and a kind of casual arrogance underneath every clever word.
Hilton spends most of the production addressing the audience from a table near the front of the stage as if the character of Tom (a stand-in for Tennessee Williams) is presenting us with a fixed moral or a lesson he’s learned from reflecting on this particular season in his life. Yet, when I read Tennessee Williams’s writing, Tom’s voice sounds less certain. Unlike the production of The Corn is Green that we saw, where we see the character of Emlyn Williams literally question the lines of the past that he is fictionalizing, Paul Hilton’s Tom expresses little hesitation that would give us room to question the memory being given to us. Although I don’t pretend to be an expert in the field, as someone who studies writing, I do know that writing about memory comes with a level of responsibility. You question yourself and your heart as you decide how best to sketch people in your life and the things that you’ve experienced. I wanted to sense that Tom was struggling to render and understand the scenes that we were witnessing. Instead, this particular production of The Glass Menagerie presented the audience with neat statements rather than questions to ponder.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is why this production felt like a surface-level reading of The Glass Menagerie, and on the topic of seeing an American play from the vantage point of Britain, many of the actors’ choices when depicting characters influenced by the South also felt one-dimensional. Ironically, the character that was most heavily influenced by the South, Amanda Wingfield, was also the only character played by an American actress. For me, Amy Adams portrayal felt the truest to what it’s like to live in Southern America. She managed to tap into that sort of overtly hospitable, mothering, attitude that makes me think of the Southern church-ladies that I grew up around. Yet, I wanted the set of the play to reflect this. Most of the Wingfield’s “apartment” was squished around a pitch-black center stage. There were papers, wires, a typewriter, a piano, and other belongings stuffed haphazardly into corners, and my immediate thought was “this is not a Southern woman’s home.” If Amanda brings Mississippi values into her arguably more mid-western children’s lives, then I would also expect a sense of order, beauty, and hospitality to be present in how she presents her home and her belongings. I wanted Tom and Laura to create disorder in an otherwise neat and too-perfectly preserved apartment, but the entire stage seemed cramped and in disarray.
On the topic of the difference between Amanda and her children, I noticed that both Tom Glynn-Carney (young Tom) and Lizzie Annis (Laura) would slip in and out of a Southern drawl. Yet, as far as I understand, Tom and Laura were raised in St. Louis, so it was confusing to understand them as Southern. After all, if Amanda’s Southern upbringing functions as a symbol of a slowly disappearing way of life that is in conflict with the world her children live in, wouldn’t the effect be lost if her children were also deeply Southern? Then again, maybe this choice had something to do with tying in Tennessee Williams’s own upbringing. According to his biography on the Poetry Foundation’s website, Williams’s was born and spent his early childhood years in Mississippi (“Tennessee Williams”). Either way, the production at the Duke of York’s Theatre seemed to generalize all of the Wingfields as Southern Americans. I wonder, honestly, if British audiences were able to pick up on a kind of disconnect or if this production seemed indicative of what springs to mind when they picture the American South.
The production of The Corn is Green that we saw made me wonder if there are similar inaccuracies about Welsh and British culture that I don’t pick up on as I watch this play because I’m American. I was curious, for instance, about the idea of the Welsh language and the fact that Mrs. Moffat, the hero of The Corn is Green, also brings a stronger emphasis on learning the English language with her when she begins to educate the children of a small, Welsh town. Are Welsh audiences offended by the way this play glorifies someone that “educates” Welsh citizens into slowly becoming more English? Do they appreciate the ways in which this play revives the Welsh language through song? As an American, do I just assume that Welsh audiences care more about this than they actually do? I think that when watching plays that are so deeply tied to a specific place or time, there’s always the possibility of misunderstanding the source material when you don’t share the same background as the playwright. However, for me, the Duke of York’s Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie seemed to water down Tennessee Williams’s deeply personal memory play.
Sources
“Tennessee Williams.” Poems and Poets, The Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tennessee-williams
Theatre in London U of A 
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