Photograph by ProPhotoSTL, courtesy of Upstream Theater
Upstream Theater is known around St. Louis for staging international plays and regularly putting on world premieres. So presenting an American classic like Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie might be a bit unexpected (though the company has staged other classics like Eugene O’Neil’s The Hairy Ape). This year, though, St. Louis is hosting its first-ever Tennessee Williams Festival (May 11–15), and Upstream Theater’s play is part of the festivities.
But audience members who are expecting a straightforward presentation of the iconic play are in for a surprise. Upstream is taking an innovative approach to their adaptation.
“The Glass Menagerie has become essentially a museum piece in a lot of ways,” says Philip Boehm, founding artistic director of Upstream, and the play’s director. “But we’re always bringing our perspective in theater. It’s always providing a lens through which we view what is playing on stage. So I thought, well what about our perspective? The St. Louis audience perspective in 2016.”
The Glass Menagerie is about Tom Wingfield, a struggling poet who still lives with his family in St. Louis and works in a shoe warehouse. He wants to get away from his overbearing mother, Amanda, who talks wistfully about her glory days when she was a feted, young southern belle with a string of suitors. Now, she is raising two kids by herself, after her husband deserted the family. Tom’s sister, Laura, is a shy, mentally fragile and physically disabled young woman who wants a boyfriend. At his mother’s behest, Tom brings a co-worker over for dinner.
“In his stage directions, Tennessee Williams talks about it being a non-realistic memory play,” says Boehm. Tom is recounting the action of the play as a flashback; he’s remembering a time in the 1930s, which in 1944, when the play debuted, wasn’t that long ago.
“What we’re trying to do is bring it more up to a present moment,” says Boehm about the time in which Tom is telling the flashback. “We’re bending the framework.”
The play also has nontraditional casting. J. Samuel Davis will play Tom, and Linda Kennedy will play his mother, Amanda. The two are well-regarded African-American actors. Sydney Frasure, who will be playing Tom’s sister Laura, is white and in a wheelchair.
Boehm says he didn’t go out looking for someone who was disabled, but Frasure was able to add depth to her part. In one scene, Tom’s coworker, Jim O’Connor, who will be played by noted actor Jason Contini, says he didn’t even notice Laura’s disability, a moment that often comes across as patronizing.
“We asked how does she [Frasure] deal with such situations, and what lesson is there both in the scene between the characters and then for us as an audience?” Boehm says.
Boehm hopes this version of The Glass Menagerie will get people to see the play with fresh eyes, both the universal and St. Louis–specific elements of it.
“To do that, we asked how can we deal with this play today in a way that takes into account that this is an iconic piece of theater, but that we’re doing it here and now,” says Boehm.
The Glass Menagerie will be at Upstream Theater (Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand) on April 29–May 1, May 5–8 and May 12–15. Showtimes are 8 p.m. except Sunday. May 1 & 8 are at 7 p.m., May 15 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20–$30. For more information visit http://upstreamtheater.org/ or call 314-669-6382.
