A memory is something like a dream. A euphoric and ethereal remark on the world around us, crafted by the deepest and most unreachable corners of our minds. They send messages and signals, give advice and warnings, and remind us of lessons from the past. They can open up new worlds, make us see things in different ways, alter our emotions or even our beliefs. 

So, when you’re bringing a ‘memory play’ to life, it has the capability and the responsibility to do all of these things. Especially when you’re recreating the perspective of a widely admired and respected playwright like Tennessee Williams. 

That is why I am fully disappointed in the performance of The Glass Menagerie that our group went to see. It was less of a dream and more of a nightmare.

Trying not to let my own visions and expectations interrupt my genuine experience of this show, I really did give it the benefit of the doubt all the way through. I came from an optimistic viewpoint and tried to use my artistic brain to give this a more beautiful twist than it was able to give itself. However, at the end after speaking with my fellow students and seeing other plays since then that have crafted the idea of a memory much more expertly — I’m disappointed in The Glass Menagerie. 

Now I don’t want this to be a complete hate letter to this show. I did enjoy it, and seeing Amy Adams perform live was definitely a treat. However, I think this show relied too heavily on having a big name on the marquee, and everything else ended up being lazily done. 

The lighting is something I typically pay special attention to, and I did not enjoy the lighting choices made in this production. The red and blue light bars placed in the back corners of the stage did not make sense with the rest of the design and did not seem to add to the show at all. The projections were honestly just ugly. I understood their purpose, and I saw what they were trying to do, I just didn’t think it worked well at all. It was unrefined. The most interesting part of the lighting was when the power went out and the entire theatre went into blackout—even the emergency exit signs. It was extremely effective at drawing me in, but then they didn’t go anywhere with it, and they let the power of that moment fizzle and die.

The set was disappointing, I think it had so much potential and it fell short. It was unimaginative and read to me like whoever designed it didn’t really understand the show. The black landscape left so much room for interpretation, but we weren’t given anything to work with. It didn’t operate from the quality of a memory, and it again just came across as lazy. The most interesting part of the set was the glass case with all the animals in it, but it seemed really out of place, especially for a supposedly poor family’s apartment.

            The blocking was uninteresting and boring. I wondered if this show even had a director in certain moments, because it really seemed like they needed one to come in and do something! This play is about relationships, the give and take and the things that bring us together and separate us. There is so much room to play here! The most interesting moment was when Tom and Laura were sitting next to each other on the floor. I was heartbroken by the dancing scene, and not in a good way. The moment where Jim and Laura are dancing is such a beautiful moment, with room for lighting and sound to create a beautifully romantic visual effect; there was nothing. The blocking did not work well, it made everything seem awkward and stumbly, and not in the way it is meant to be. Then, when Jim breaks the unicorn – I cringed. It did NOT work well, it didn’t even look like he landed on the glass figure at all, and the actors themselves looked uncomfortable and unpracticed. This moment was not well executed, and it really took me out of the reality of the story. It is the most pivotal moment in the entire show where Tennessee Williams metaphor comes to life and you begin to understand the fragility he is trying to communicate in Laura. This moment was when I officially dropped my optimistic mindset and marked this show off as a mid-level production.

            I wouldn’t recommend it, outside of the chance to see Amy Adams perform. She was fantastic, and the man who played Jim was also very charismatic and believable. Other than that I was not impressed by the acting. I know this mostly falls on the director’s choices that were projected upon their performances, but I also think they were given a very difficult task of dropping into a reality that had been sloppily thrown together. Anyone is bound to drown in that scenario. Even the people in front of me remarked that Laura’s performance was indicative and not convincing, and they did not return for the second act of the show. Normally, I’m against this rude sort of behavior. This time, I couldn’t blame them.

            The Glass Menagerie is one of my favorite shows, and I was very upset that this it the way they chose to tell his story. I don’t think it did Tennessee Williams any justice or worked at all to communicate his message. I hope the audience didn’t let this particular production get in the way of their perception of Williams. I hope that no one ever does my work this sort of injustice after I’m gone. I bought the script so I could read it again and refresh my love for this show; I must get the taste of this West End production out of my mouth.

            To end on a happier note, this was my first expedition after escaping from the cold chains of quarantine in the Royal National Hotel. It was fantastic to see all my friends again, it was an instant cure-all to get back into the swing of things with them again.

            Singing off from London,

                                                Margaret

The Glass Menagerie

Widely considered one of Tennessee Williams’s best plays, The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, examining the complicated themes of family, responsibility, and generational trauma through the lens of the young man Tom Wingfield and his family in depression-era St. Louis. Tom is a factory worker, whose mother Amanda and sister Laura live at home. They were left by Tom’s father years before, and Tom is forced early-on to take a “man of the house” role and provide as best he can for the three of them. Amanda is a former southern belle type who constantly struggles with the changing state of the world around her. Laura is slightly older than Tom, but is subjected to a frustrating cripple in one of her legs, which forced her to wear a brace in her formative years. She no longer wears the brace, but displays a clear limp now that she is older. One of the central struggles of the play is Amanda’s desire to live vicariously through her daughter during this phase of her life, in which Amanda expects an array of “Gentleman Callers” to be constantly visiting them to court Laura.

A tension is introduced between them, because Laura is simply unable to look past her own flaws, which are magnified in her own eyes, to the point of not being able to view of herself as worthy of courting at all. She intentionally isolates herself, spending most of her time with a collection of delicate glass animals, constantly dusting them and admiring them in their case. Meanwhile, Tom feels suffocated by his responsibilities to his mother and sister, and goes “to the movies” at night to escape the claustrophobia and frustration caused by his home, torn between wanting to pursue his dreams but not wanting to repeat the sins of his father, which put them in this position in the first place. When he returns from his evenings at the cinema, he is often drunk, leading the audience and his mother to question the reliability of his accounts. There are clear parallels between the self-isolating methods of Laura and Tom, and here is where lots of the play’s effectiveness lies. The most important scene of the play comes when at his mother’s request, Tom brings a friend, Jim O’Connor over for dinner with the intention of setting him up with Laura. Tom is unaware that this is Laura’s high school crush. The evening goes unexpectedly well, with Jim being surprisingly sensitive to Laura’s insecurities; they even share a dance and a kiss before Jim ultimately lets her and her family down in the end, leaving them alone once more.

Clearly, there is a depth in subject matter here that has allowed the show to be mined time and time again for new angles. Tom’s unreliability is a narrator, combined with the show’s hazy memory feel, means that practically every time it gets a new staging, directors can find new things to emphasize and the audience could potentially be getting a fresh look at an old classic. With that said, this West End version, starring Amy Adams, fell flat and was ultimately disappointing.

I continually felt that the direction of this show was relying on the star power of Amy Adams to carry the show, and although she is amazing, that is an unfair thing to ask of anyone (especially when her character isn’t on stage for the most important scene of the play, and a good portion of Act II). The design of this show looked promising, with an empty stage surrounded by many great period set pieces and a variety of black scrims, which I expected to drop down and plunge sections of the stage into a haze, invoking memories. None of this happened, and the lighting did very little to invoke these effects as well, and we were just subjected to a show in which all the important action happened in a black void center stage, while the characters that weren’t immediately involved lurked in the well-designed wings. It’s totally inexplicable to me.

Furthermore, some of the play’s most important scenes were given essentially no weight. The central moment in the play, when Jim and Laura dance but stumble, and break her favorite glass animal, the unicorn, just before Jim reveals that he is in fact engaged and cannot pursue Laura in the ways he has implied. Earlier in the play, Tom also breaks one of her animals in a moment of anger as he storms out of the apartment. These moments hold immense weight as part of the metaphor for Laura’s trauma, but were handled clumsily in the play. Both times, the audience was meant to imagine the glass breaking, without even a sound effect to accompany the big moment. This is another inexplicable choice to me, for the director clearly had no problem with breaking props, as Tom’s actor throws a glass against the back wall of the stage nightly, in a fairly forced outburst towards his mother.

Because of the show’s depth in subject matter, there is a lot more to critique about this particular production, but suffice it to say that the cast, audience, and play itself deserve directorial choices that work with the text, rather than struggle against it at seemingly every turn. I wanted to like this one, but I couldn’t, and I ultimately attribute that to the direction.

[now playing: Let Down – Radiohead]

After reading The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and discussing it during class, I was so thrilled that we were going to see it on the West End; especially because it was starring one of my favorite actors, Amy Adams. We had beautiful conversations about it being a memory play, the potential of the technical elements involved with the production, and the way we saw the complex lives of the characters living within this piece. I absolutely had an idea in my head regarding what the set should look like, the lighting, and all the other elements of theatre that we use as tools for story-telling. When we arrived and I saw the set, I was sure that the pieces of furniture and spaces in their home would be brought onstage, leaving us with a living set of the Wingfield home. I was shocked when I realized the director chose not to do that, and instead allowed the actors to move about a mostly bare, black stage surrounded by a realistic version of their apartment. During our discussion in the park, Shawn mentioned the idea that a memory seems fuzzy on the outsides, not the core, when he remembers things in his mind. I agree and that was the main reason why I was so disappointed by the choice to set the show in the way that they did. To me, not only did this choice not give the show its full dreamlike tone, but it limited the actors regarding their movement, spacial relationship to one another, and efficiency in viewing the show as a whole. It was widely due to my seat I’m sure, but most of the time I either couldn’t see what an actor was doing on the sides of the black center stage, or I had to move myself in order to view anything they were doing when they weren’t dead center. However, the set piece that felt the closest to what I had imaged was Laura’s glass menagerie. While I would’ve wanted to see it in more of a wooden cabinet and not something that resembled that of a glass museum case, it was still as sparkling, clean, and delicate as I pictured it. The lighting design was one of the strongest elements of the show to me solely due to the theatre wide blackout that occurred when their apartment’s power was cut, leaving Laura and Jim to have an intimate candlelit scene on the floor. That was my favorite scene in the entire show, other than when Amanda came out dressed in what could’ve been a fluffy wedding dress to show off how beautiful she was in Laura’s time. The show itself is semi-autobiographical for Tennessee Williams and the areas that I feel a British artist could lose contact with or have trouble connecting with is how intimate the piece is as a whole and his (plus Tom’s) overall disdain for the town of St. Louis. London is far larger of a city, therefore I could see how this growing hatred for being stuck within St. Louis’ city limits could be hard to grasp as an artist in such a large city. I know that is very specific an as actors/artists we must be able to pretend, but it could have affected the overall vision for the show in some way. 

When it comes to an American play being produced by remarkable British artists on the West End, I was left confused by the choices that were made. However, all of the other British theatre we have seen has left me speechless, inspired, and wanting more. As an American student currently studying acting under someone I consider the greatest instructor/mentor I have ever had, British theatre reminded me of all the lessons she has taught me, one of the greatest being to always go deeper. The growing understanding of the depth of humanity has been one of the biggest takeaways for me (among so many other techniques) and I have gratefully been able to view works full of British actors that more than understand that principal. With that principal also comes the physical embodiment of it and how it allows you to exist in whatever space you are in, something that I believe those involved in the West End/British theatre do in excellence. Regarding the Glass Menagerie, there were beautiful moments between characters in this way, but the overall vision Jeremy Herrin had for this classic Tennessee Williams piece left me puzzled. His credits are outstanding and I truly believe, as we said in class, all that left me confused was a choice, just not one I would make.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a memory play that centers on family and the complicated relationships associated with the word. Tennessee Williams is one of America’s most famous playwrights, so seeing a production in London was an interesting experience. Amy Adams stared as Amanda Wingfield, a mother of two adult children. Amy being American already set her up for success in terms of the dialect and knowledge of the region in which the play takes place. Seeing an American play in Britain is definitely a cool experienceas most of the actors in the play have to do American dialects. For the most part, the dialects in the show were phenomenal. As an American, it was easier to spot when actors would slip up, but the British audience probably wouldn’t have even noticed. For the British audience, this play gives insight to the culture of American city life and the effects of being raised in the south, as Amanda was raised in Mississippi which effects how she raised her children. Much like Americans watching British plays, British audiences must rely on context clues throughout the performance to understand the history behind the setting and actions of the play. It would be like and American going to see a play about England in the 1940s. I think that the basic human emotions found in the play can be related to by any nationality. The family dynamic found in the play and the constant fighting by Amanda and her children Tom and Laura could be found on any continent and in any time period.

The play we saw starring Amy Adams was honestly a disappointment. The acting was okay at best and I found myself rather bored throughout the show. The set wasn’t helping the actors any and hindered their performances. The set was a blank black stage surrounded by time period set pieces. I thought at some point the set would move in to fill the blank stage, but it never happened. The one cool thing I found about the set was the glass case that was revealed and held all of Laura’s glass pieces. Other than that, the set was too large a space for the actors to communicate the intimate setting of the play. The actors were more than likely directed in certain ways that caused their performance to be less than stunning. Amy Adams is an incredible actress and I feel that if the set had been different, the show would have been much more well received. The actors themselves seemed to be on different playing fields and even in completely different shows when it came to being onstage together. The one actor I felt impressed me was the actor who played Jim, the male caller for Laura in Act 2. He brought great energy and motivation behind his work and played off the other actors incredibly well. His performance was my favorite of the night.

All in all, I wanted more from the performance and left feeling like the show was missing something.

Glass Menagerie

Although I have never seen a Tennessee Williams play, I was pretty disappointed by this version of The Glass Menagerie. Part of my disappointment is probably because I’ve studied this play for years and have read it multiple times. It’s easy to build up an image in your head of what something should look like. I think that’s why movie adaptations of novels can be so disappointing as well. My other reservation against the criticisms I’m about to list is that I admittedly had a pretty bad seat. I couldn’t see a corner of the stage or any of the projections, although I heard that the projections didn’t really add anything to the drama. There were some points when Braedon shared his opera glasses and I got to see the action a bit closer though.

The set was a bit strange. The outside edges were filled with the detailed set and interesting prop pieces. However, the center where all the action took place was an opaque black that seemed to suck the dimension out of much of the show. I expected some haze to add the idea of memory. Instead, the designers chose this disappointing emptiness. There was no fire escape, which is the second most important symbol in the play. And the glass menagerie itself was arranged too stately and crisply for an apartment in depression-era St. Louis. I’m afraid that these choices were made just to make the show seem more contemporary and different, but they did it at such a great cost to the art.

Amanda is my favorite character of The Glass Menagerie and I was disappointed by how much Amy Adams seemed to be holding back. Amanda is the largest and most ridiculous character in the play and it felt like her stakes here too low throughout. In William’s script, she’s hilarious and very sad. However Adams’ acting made her just a bit feckless and unreminiscient. I wonder how many of the poor acting choices were due the direction, as Amy Adams is regarded as a phenomenal actress.

I was also disappointed about how certain moments worked at the end. They felt off-tone for the show. The most grievous offender was the dance and the unicorn breaking at the end. I expected something larger when that happened. That moment is the clear climax of the show and deserved at least a lighting change, but there was nothing. The dance itself was pretty awkward too, which is contrary to Williams’ intention. During the scene, Jim is supposed to empower and draw the joy out of Laura, but it felt like nothing changed.
It’s hard to watch The Glass Menagerie and not compare it to The Corn is Green. Both are reminiscent, semi-autobiographical memory plays. They’re modern classics as well. And both these adaptations added/divided an extra narrator/writer character who drove the story. These were the most interesting additions to these stories I could’ve imagined. Brilliant storytelling in both cases, but I think The Corn is Green worked better as an overall story. I think I identify with this play more and definitely plan to draw monologues from it. The set for The Corn is Green was much more interesting than the one for The Glass Menagerie too. It was so dynamic, being built as the show progressed. I’m of the opinion that every show should make an effort to include meaningful music. Emlyn Williams’ play made great use of music as well while Tennessee Williams’ play didn’t. However, in The Corn is Green, every actor knew what they wanted and how high the stakes were. This, as well as some scripting changes, made for an excellent play, and a brilliant memory play.

The Glass Menagerie is referred to as a “memory play” and was written and published by Tennessee Williams in 1944. This play centers around a family, Tom the son, Amanda the mom, Laura the daughter, and a “suitor” named Jim. There are two Toms present, the older narrator and the younger one we see acting out the scenes.

Overall, this was probably my least favorite play that we have seen. I feel that the director made odd choices and banked heavily on the fact that Amy Adams was in the show. While it is an American show in parts it did not feel as such. The lighting was not done well (subjectively), and the only thing that I thought was continuously lit well was the Glass Menagerie itself. The set was one that I personally would not design for this show, but it was not all bad. I felt like there were some missed opportunities where the surrounding pieces could have been brought onto the stage on stage. I also feel like there could’ve been some chairs or better seating options.

Since the show was performed in London, unless people have read the play, they might not have known where the characters were or where the mom was referencing. The only real context I was able to use was the accent that the mom and Laura had and even then, I could really only get vaguely South if anything. Typically plays set in the South can have a feeling or tone of being trapped and this does apply to the character Tom. Williams’s relationship with his own sister Rose has an effect on the play and is definitely shown. While Tennessee was attending the University of Iowa, his sister underwent a lobotomy. Williams felt a tremendous amount of guilt that we can all see in his work. While the details are different, The Glass Menagerie mirrors Williams’s relationship with his family.

I have adored going through all the cathedrals/churches during our stay. I had no idea the magnitude of their construction until we first toured St. Paul’s, so I was incredibly excited to tour Westminster. As soon as we entered the Abbey, I grew so appreciative of the opportunity to stand in one of the most notable religious & historical landmarks in London. I am so happy that we were able to be shown around by Molly, the best tour guide in the world. The way she spoke about the British traditions, coronations, burials, memorials, etc. made me appreciate the experience so much. She spoke of Westminster and its history so delicately and with such respect, which I felt made the tour as awe-inspiring as the building itself. 

I have already spoken briefly in earlier blogs about my fascination with the memorials/tombs we have been seeing all around London, but Westminster Abbey topped all that I had previously seen. The royal members that are buried there are encased in such gorgeous memorials and their grandiose structures were mind-boggling to me. What I found so cool, is that most of the royal burials included statues around them. I started to notice that most of the statues were crying, with what looked like a single tear rolling down their cheek. In some, the statues were covering their eyes with their hands or looked as though they were wiping tears from their face. 

Along with royals, there were so many other famous or significant people buried or memorialized there as well. Scientist’s corner was the most gorgeous to me, the altar on display in front of the main area was so beautiful. There we saw Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Hawking. It was around this time in the tour that I started to really grasp the importance of Westminster Abbey and started to feel surreal walking around while listening to Molly. 

The three notable memorials, among many others, that I saw were of Oscar Wilde, William Shakespeare, and Jane Austen. Oscar Wilde, while he is not buried there, had a glass window memorial that I thought was the prettiest stained glass in the area of the Abbey that we were in. Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright, who became popular in London around 1890. He is most known to me for his works The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, however he wrote 7 other plays and so much more poetry. Wilde passed from an early death due to meningitis at the age of 46 in November of 1900. Along with Wilde, William Shakespeare is also not buried in Westminster but had a more extravagant memorial. He was given a statue of himself, placed in the center of Poet’s Corner. I know I don’t have to say this, but he is known for writing over 30 plays, 150 sonnets, plus other pieces of literature. He is recognized as England’s National Poet, as well as regarded as the world’s greatest dramatists. His contributions to theatre have given him a legacy that has greatly outlived him and has influenced writers, actors, and theatre artists since his death in 1616. Lastly, Jane Austen was given a memorial plaque placed near the statue of Shakespeare. Her work includes famous novels that rely heavily on the dependance that women had on marriage in order to gain any kind of social and economic security. Austen wrote 9 novels, but is assumed to have also written 3,000 letters over the course of her life with only 161 of those surviving. 

The next time I am in London I will be coming back to Westminster Abbey for another glance at all the famous memorials and a closer look at all the royalty buried within its walls. Westminster is truly remarkable and having Molly as a guide made the experience so rich.

June 13th, 2022

For my fringe theatre experience, I -along with the rest of the group- watched Lift. Besides the plot of the musical, I was surprised by the environment, and how I interacted with the production itself. While I did not care for the plot much, I did appreciate the intimacy of the room, as it was black box production with not too many seats. With the seating in a U shape, I often found myself looking around to the audience on the sides to see their reactions to the musical. While I found it amusing at the moment, looking back, I would have appreciated being more locked into the production which might have worked better with different seating arrangements. 

For the plot itself, I stayed pretty confused throughout the entire production, as I questioned whether or not the narrator was real or imaginary. I also questioned if each of the characters knew one another, as each of them described people whose names were Sarah, Kate, and Gabriel. It became even more confusing when each of the personal stories included the same names, which left me questioning if they were the same hypothetical people or if they were different individuals who just so happened to have the same names. Even now, I genuinely have zero clues as to what the answer to that is. 

I also felt like a prude watching the musical. I was genuinely horrified at some of the scenes that were acted out in the production. I will not go into detail, as I still see myself as a prude, but I am pretty certain that my jaw hit the floor a time or two.

While the storyline confused me, I did appreciate the soundtrack. It honestly has stuck with me since I have watched Lift. Now, each time I enter an elevator in the underground I think “wow what if we all just broke out in song and dance right now.”

-Maggie Martin

June 13th, 2022

After spending a few weeks in London, I have been lucky enough to venture over to Borough Market twice. The first time, I had a BBQ wrap and then a German dessert: Bienenstich. The second time, I finally achieved my goal of getting a toastie! It was definitely more than I expected, as the food stand put onions in with the toastie too. After eating that too quickly, I managed to buy not one, not two, but three desserts (yes I did over-do it, but do I regret it? No.) Both of these times were so much fun, as the food was delicious. I really think I am going to go back for a third time before we leave London and get the bienenstich one last time. The caramelized nuts on top made it absolutely incredible.

I will always remember the experiences I have had in Borough Market. I compare it to the overwhelming feeling you get at a mall food court where there are so many options in front of you that you can’t decide, but this is amplified to where there are swarms of people trying to decide what they want as well but shoved into a smaller space with more options to choose from. Overwhelming? Yes. Worth it? Yes. 

I think it is absolutely incredible that within the city of London, one can find just about any type of food they want from many cultures around the world (besides cheese dip of course for reasons I have yet to figure out). It has been rewarding to go out of my comfort zone with different restaurants and try new foods that I normally would not have the opportunity to try back at home.  

Last night, I went to Patinga and tried Nigerian cuisine. This was my first time trying this type of cuisine, and I absolutely loved it. I ordered a coconut rice dish that had shrimp and goat meat in it. Then for dessert we ordered fried plantains with ice cream and Nigerian donuts. (An aside: I am so sorry Taylor and Kath that I dropped one of the donuts on accident. I am a clutz.) 

I have loved every second of the trip, as I am able to try new things: I am even trying Bao tomorrow in Chinatown. London is definitely unique in its own right, as their fish and chips are a local staple, but also for their plethora of food options that come from across the globe! It must be nice for the locals to have so many choices right at their fingertips, but it does make me wonder if locals try new restaurants regularly or if they have a few that they always go to.

-Maggie Martin

June 13^th

It has been nearly a week since I went to see The Glass Menagerie starring Amy Adams. I am glad I gave myself time to think about it and saw other plays before beginning this blogging process. I was overall disappointed in the production and directing of the play and just wanted more out of the experience. The accents were spot on to my American ear, but the setting did not come to life for me. It was surreal seeing Amy Adams because she is in so many fantastic movies but even her character did not bring what I wanted it to. Tennessee Williams is a classic southern writer, but I do not think the director flushed out the background of St. Louis and the mother’s past Mississippi roots. I cannot think of anything that really clued me into her history except her strong accent.

Soon after The Glass Menagerie, I saw The House of Shades and The Corn is Green. These are British plays and I enjoyed them more than the American production. Although the words could be hard to understand, the set and various characters made the location seem significant. I did lose some implications because I do not know a lot about British politics which were heavily debated in The House of Shades. I really enjoyed how Emlyn Williams was an active part in The Corn is Green. It made me wish that The Glass Menagerie had put more time into fleshing out the idea of a memory play and the biography of Tennessee Williams. I am not sure of the director’s background, but I wonder if something from the American play was lost in the British production. In the same way I struggle to understand British accents, I also heard others complain about not grasping American accents.

I have spent so much time studying The Glass Menagerie and analyzing what Tennessee Williams put of himself into the play. If I had not known going in that it was semiautobiographical, I do not think I would have known of his history in the south and his rough family environment. The tone of Old Tom did not even feel particularly worn out and regretful. All in all, the set was relatively boring and the space between the actors left the dialogue feeling distant.

Even though I was disappointed by this play, it made me appreciate the plays I saw after more.

-Tabi is Booked