The Glass Menagerie

Pangdemonium
Victoria Theatre, Saturday (March 12)

Pangdemonium's The Glass Menagerie, a play that has spent nearly two years in pandemic limbo, opens at last to packed stalls, as the easing of Covid-19 capacity restrictions on live shows means the theatre company can finally fill the house.

And in time too, for this finely wrought adaptation deserves bigger audiences.

Singapore theatre is no stranger to American playwright Tennessee Williams' 1944 classic, a semi-autobiographical "memory play" in which a broken family inhabit - or are trapped in - their own dream world as a grim reality knocks at the door.

Many past productions have opted to translate it to a local context, from Page To Stage's 2002 Mandarin version to multiple Malay adaptations through the years.

Director Tracie Pang, however, returns to the original setting of 1930s St Louis, Missouri, against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War.

This is borne out in Eucien Chia's beautifully detailed set, a shabby tenement with antique furniture, a Victrola gramophone and a rickety fire escape.

It is lit by James Tan with a soft glow that evokes the candlelight of Williams' script, though behind it looms the cold glitter of glass, which encircles the characters as if trapping them in the glass menagerie of the title.

Also on point are Leonard Augustine Choo's costumes, from delicate blouson dresses in teal or lilac, to an outlandishly beribboned gown that plays up how out of step its wearer is with the times.

The cast affect heavy Southern accents - competently, for the most part, and even sometimes unobtrusively.

American actress Catherine Gardner, best known for her television soap opera work, easily commands the stage as overbearing matron Amanda Wingfield.

Abandoned by her husband to raise two children alone, Amanda cycles between reminiscing about her glory days as a Southern belle and obsessively trying to settle her children in better lives.

Gardner renders her as both monstrous and frightfully relatable. She also brings out the latent comedy of Williams' script, supplying much of the play's levity.

Jamil Schulze plays her son Tom, an aspiring poet who chafes against the mind-numbing warehouse work he undertakes to support his family.

Their dynamic is less mother-son, more that of reluctant partners yoked together in an unendurable enterprise. The play crackles when they clash in their rages.

Singer-songwriter Inch Chua shines in a sweet, subtle performance as Tom's frail sister Laura, who walks with a limp due to a childhood bout of pleurosis that has left her painfully reclusive.

Though older than Tom, Laura appears child-like and suffers an anxiety that renders her incapable of staying in school, holding down a job or doing anything other than tending to her collection of glass figurines. Like them, she requires a degree of care beyond what those around her have the capacity for.

The family's hopes rest on a gentleman caller, Tom's co-worker Jim, whose affections Amanda hopes to secure for Laura. Salif Hardie plays him with a confidence that verges on cartoonish, more salesman than suitor.

With its vintage trappings and era-specific language, the play may seem a period piece. But Tracie Pang lets its contemporary resonances speak for themselves: people stuck in a stasis of discontent due to a global crisis, watching with unease as war breaks out abroad, unable to forge ahead in their own lives.

Tom, who frequents the cinema as a form of escape from his stifling home life, remarks: "People go to the movies instead of moving."

Especially heartbreaking is the treatment of Laura's mental health, from her mother's brusque attempts to force her into society, to Jim's well-meaning but ultimately damaging exhortations to get over her inferiority complex.

The play's timelessness rests on the poetry of Williams' script, particularly its stunning ending, which Schulze delivers with aplomb.

"For nowadays the world is lit by lightning," concludes Tom, as the play breaks from a vitrified past into a violent present. At least the easing of restrictions means more people will be able to catch this production before its candles go out.

Book it/ The Glass Menagerie

Where: Victoria Theatre, 11 Empress Place
MRT: City Hall/Raffles City
When: Till March 27, Tuesdays to Fridays, 8pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 3 and 8pm
Admission: $40 to $80 from Pangdemonium's website