Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Misplaced Menagerie

The Old Globe Theatre’s “Classics Up Close” series presents some of the great works of American theater on the small Cassius Carter Centre Stage. The theater-in-the-round offers an intimate look at plays usually seen many rows away. And you’d think Tennessee Williams’s haunted “memory” drama, The Glass Menagerie, would be a perfect choice for the series. But in almost every frame, the show gives the distinct impression that it resents close inspection. In fact, I can’t remember a production more obviously uncomfortable with its surroundings.

Joe Calarco ably directed Lincolnesque in the Carter two years ago. His cast did restrained, stately work. So Calarco’s familiar with the space, knows the demands of playing to four walls of bleachered spectators. But his Menagerie’s another matter: it refuses to stand still. Someone makes an abrupt move every five beats. They bounce up or suddenly wheel and go, as if late for an appointment. These mannered movements consistently pull focus from the story. At one point, in possibly one of the strangest choices in the history of Menagerie stagings, poor “crippled” Laura scrambles up the southwest steps on all fours, like a frightened cat.

Sponsored
Sponsored

In Tom’s monologues a herky-jerky, overly gestural Michael Simpson makes a quarter-turn, addresses some lines to one side of the audience, then makes another turn, addresses another side, then another. After a while he looks like a lighthouse beam, slowly spinning in place, shining on one-fourth of the room and leaving the rest in the dark (some of Tom’s narrations are done in voice-over, which takes him outside the scene altogether). The actors’ movements would be less irksome if the text motivated them, but many aren’t. They simply reassemble and perform to a different wall.

Michael Fagin’s abstract set contributes to the problem. The round “floor,” a brown mesa centerstage, stands higher than the rooms around it (for reasons unclear, instead of the claustrophobic brick walls that surround the apartment, the floor’s also displayed on three of the Carter’s walls). When actors move from one room to the next, often they must drop down or rise over an entry runway, or, for the key scene, step up to the floor.

The acting, apart from the steeplechase upstaging it, is surprisingly reined in. Mare Winningham plays Amanda — the mother given to operatic extremes — in a contained fashion. Her voice rises and falls with musical precision, and her timing is stopwatch precise, but her emotions rarely flare, her control-urges rarely grasp (even the “girlish frock” she wears, from her “jonquil” days, is muted). Michelle Federer’s Laura, who sometimes forgets to limp, could use more introversion. And Kevin Isola plays the Gentleman Caller almost free from subtexts (his chat with Laura is both actual and a chance to practice what he’s learning in a public speaking class: how to fit in with anyone).

In the play, Tom Wingfield returns, in his imagination, to the scene of his gravest crime: Depression-riddled St. Louis in the late 1930s — a time, he says, “when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind.” A budding poet working in a shoe factory, he wants to break free — as Tennessee Williams did from his helpless sister Rose. And Tom will, abandoning her in the process; “to escape from a trap,” Williams writes, Tom has “to act without pity.”

In Our Town, the deceased Emily wants to return to her family for one day, just to watch. Don’t go on a good one, the narrator warns, it’ll be too much to handle. In Menagerie, which has studied every innovative technique of Our Town, Tom chooses to revisit the greatest, and worst, day of his sister’s life. Rejected by the Gentleman Caller, she loses forever “the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for” — and shatters like one of her glass figurines.

Laura’s recognition, that the Gentleman Caller’s spoken for, is the key moment in Menagerie. American theater has few as devastating. As the scene progresses, she rises toward the sun, then plunges, like an Icarus, into oblivion. In Calarco’s staging, however, candlelit Laura and the Gentleman Caller face southeast, which blocks her reaction to 80 percent of the audience.

In his production notes, Williams bemoans the state of realistic (he calls it “photographic”) theater and asks for fluid, “plastic” representation. But, he adds, “When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality…but should be attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.” The Old Globe’s fitful, jumping-bean Menagerie is unconventional, true, but also unappealing.

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Hill Street Donuts makes life sweet

A little bit of local love for a longtime confectionary
Next Article

Economical freezer-filling rockfish trips

Long-range season begins with a bang

The Old Globe Theatre’s “Classics Up Close” series presents some of the great works of American theater on the small Cassius Carter Centre Stage. The theater-in-the-round offers an intimate look at plays usually seen many rows away. And you’d think Tennessee Williams’s haunted “memory” drama, The Glass Menagerie, would be a perfect choice for the series. But in almost every frame, the show gives the distinct impression that it resents close inspection. In fact, I can’t remember a production more obviously uncomfortable with its surroundings.

Joe Calarco ably directed Lincolnesque in the Carter two years ago. His cast did restrained, stately work. So Calarco’s familiar with the space, knows the demands of playing to four walls of bleachered spectators. But his Menagerie’s another matter: it refuses to stand still. Someone makes an abrupt move every five beats. They bounce up or suddenly wheel and go, as if late for an appointment. These mannered movements consistently pull focus from the story. At one point, in possibly one of the strangest choices in the history of Menagerie stagings, poor “crippled” Laura scrambles up the southwest steps on all fours, like a frightened cat.

Sponsored
Sponsored

In Tom’s monologues a herky-jerky, overly gestural Michael Simpson makes a quarter-turn, addresses some lines to one side of the audience, then makes another turn, addresses another side, then another. After a while he looks like a lighthouse beam, slowly spinning in place, shining on one-fourth of the room and leaving the rest in the dark (some of Tom’s narrations are done in voice-over, which takes him outside the scene altogether). The actors’ movements would be less irksome if the text motivated them, but many aren’t. They simply reassemble and perform to a different wall.

Michael Fagin’s abstract set contributes to the problem. The round “floor,” a brown mesa centerstage, stands higher than the rooms around it (for reasons unclear, instead of the claustrophobic brick walls that surround the apartment, the floor’s also displayed on three of the Carter’s walls). When actors move from one room to the next, often they must drop down or rise over an entry runway, or, for the key scene, step up to the floor.

The acting, apart from the steeplechase upstaging it, is surprisingly reined in. Mare Winningham plays Amanda — the mother given to operatic extremes — in a contained fashion. Her voice rises and falls with musical precision, and her timing is stopwatch precise, but her emotions rarely flare, her control-urges rarely grasp (even the “girlish frock” she wears, from her “jonquil” days, is muted). Michelle Federer’s Laura, who sometimes forgets to limp, could use more introversion. And Kevin Isola plays the Gentleman Caller almost free from subtexts (his chat with Laura is both actual and a chance to practice what he’s learning in a public speaking class: how to fit in with anyone).

In the play, Tom Wingfield returns, in his imagination, to the scene of his gravest crime: Depression-riddled St. Louis in the late 1930s — a time, he says, “when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind.” A budding poet working in a shoe factory, he wants to break free — as Tennessee Williams did from his helpless sister Rose. And Tom will, abandoning her in the process; “to escape from a trap,” Williams writes, Tom has “to act without pity.”

In Our Town, the deceased Emily wants to return to her family for one day, just to watch. Don’t go on a good one, the narrator warns, it’ll be too much to handle. In Menagerie, which has studied every innovative technique of Our Town, Tom chooses to revisit the greatest, and worst, day of his sister’s life. Rejected by the Gentleman Caller, she loses forever “the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for” — and shatters like one of her glass figurines.

Laura’s recognition, that the Gentleman Caller’s spoken for, is the key moment in Menagerie. American theater has few as devastating. As the scene progresses, she rises toward the sun, then plunges, like an Icarus, into oblivion. In Calarco’s staging, however, candlelit Laura and the Gentleman Caller face southeast, which blocks her reaction to 80 percent of the audience.

In his production notes, Williams bemoans the state of realistic (he calls it “photographic”) theater and asks for fluid, “plastic” representation. But, he adds, “When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality…but should be attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.” The Old Globe’s fitful, jumping-bean Menagerie is unconventional, true, but also unappealing.

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Live Five: Deaf Club, Ed Kornhauser, Little Dove, Kinnie Dye, Adam Wolff

Residencies and one-offs in Little Italy, Del Mar, Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Coronado
Next Article

Luxury addiction treatment on Country Rose Circle

Encinitas dry-out spa protected by federal law
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader