No Escape - A Story of One Family's Fragility - "The Glass Menagerie" at the A.R.T.

Last evening, the A.R.T. welcomed the critics for the official Press Opening of Tennessee Williams' classic drama, "The Glass Menagerie."  This production is directed by Broadway veteran and Tony Award winner, John Tiffany.  It was crystal clear to this audience member from the opening lines spoken by the play's narrator, Tom Wingfield, that this would be a special night within the dreamlike confines of the Loeb Theatre's Main Stage.  It seems as if that stage's last denizens - the cast of "Pippin" - as they decamped to Broadway, had left something of their spirit and ethos beyond.  They had not taken all of the Muses' inspiration with them to New York.  For there was magic in the air as Williams' poetry was brought to life by a stellar cast, undergirded by strong direction and by scenic and lighting designs that are transcendent.

Tom makes it clear in his prologue that the play represents not reality, but rather his memories of his family's struggles in St. Louis in the Depression.  The story is told as if those memories are evoked in a dream.  The simple and spare set creates a dreamscape upon which the human menagerie of fragile creatures play out their tragedy.  The adult children, Tom and Laura, long to escape to a different future; their mother, Amanda, retreats to the solace of her remembered salad days in the Mississippi Delta when she entertained as many as seventeen "gentlemen callers" in one glorious day.

The set, designed by Tony Award winner Bob Crowley, is really the fifth character in the play.  The Wingfield's flat is represented by three interlocking hexagons set at slightly different levels from one another.  The stylized Wingfield habitat is surmounted by a fire escape that plays a dual role.  At its lower levels, the fire escape is "practical," in that it enables access and egress for the actors as they interact between the cocoon of the home and the outside world.  At another level of meaning, the fire escape soars and telescopes into an infinite beyond - a "Stairway to Heaven," if you will, or Jack's magical Beanstalk.  Yet none of the characters ever ascends to the upper reaches of the fire escape.  Only Tom "escapes" the tedium of his life at home and in the shoe factory.  And his escape is a descent - both physically and morally - as he runs down the fire escape and runs out on his mother and sister to a new life.  In running away, he recapitulates the sins of his absent father, who was a "telephone man who fell in love with Long Distances"!  Jim O'Connor, the gentlemen caller,  cannot wait to head down those same stairs to escape from Mother Wingfield's manipulative attempts to trap him as a suitor for Laura.  The entire set appears to float just above a reflective, blackened pool of water, making it appear that all of the fragile and transparent action is transpiring upon a sea of glass.  The effect is electrifying.

Equally electrifying is the lighting design by Natasha Katz, another Tony Award winner.  Light is a crucial motif in this play, and the subtle changes of illumination throughout the two acts add to the sense of wonder, worry, anticipation and foreboding that cast shadows upon the drama.  Pin-point spots light up Laura's glass unicorn - a double symbol of her psychic escape into unreality and frailty.  A candelabra is used to great effect to punctuate the flickering fortunes of the characters.

The color palette of the set is a range of dusty roses and reds - emblematic, I imagine, of several key elements of the story.  Laura, during her high school years, had been given the nickname, "Blue Roses", by O'Connor when he misunderstood that she had been ill with pleurosis.  The mother, Amanda Wingfield, is in many senses a dusty and faded rose.  The rose colored sofa plays a significant role - doubling as a gateway as well as a symbol of both womb and tomb.

The cast is superb.  They are veterans of Broadway, films and TV.  Cherry Jones as Mother, is everything that this iconic character needs to be - and more. She is matronly, delusional, anachronistic, meddling,  jabbering, overbearing, over-protective - and unforgettable.  Zachary Quinto, recognizable as Mr. Spock in the 2009 Star Trek film, plays Tom with equal measures of passion and desperation.  Celia Keenan-Bolger shrinks into the role of the crippled Laura in ways that are wondrous to behold, coming to life briefly when Jim dances with  her to the music of the Victrola, only to sink back into a fugue-like state of desuetude when Jim reveals that he has a steady girl.  Brian J. Smith  as the gentleman caller sounds just the right notes of bravado and vulnerability.

Laura is physically crippled, but in truth, all of the characters are crippled in some way by their inability to live with present reality or to create a more hopeful future reality.  The writing has been long acclaimed as brilliant.  This current rendition of Williams' play adds a new depth to the pathos that is the story of the Wingfield family.

The play will continue to run at the A.R.T. through March 17.

American Repertory Theater - Glass Menagerie

Enjoy!

Al

Review of "Defying Gravity - The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz from Godspell to Wicked" by Carol de Giere

Any regular reader of The White Rhino Report is well aware that I have been following closely the development of the new production of Pippin that is about to move to Broadway after premiering at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge.  In the course of tracking the show's evolution, I attended a number of performances and enjoyed several conversations with members of the cast, the director, Diane Paulus and the composer, the incomparable Stephen Schwartz.  So, it was natural for me to be waiting backstage after the final A.R.T. performance to say good-bye to several members of the Pippin company.  As I lingered and interacted with cast members, a woman approached me and asked: "Are you affiliated with this show? You seem to know everyone."  I explained that I was merely an enthusiastic audience member and someone who had reviewed the show.  She told me that she is Stephen Schwartz's authorized biographer of his creative career.  Thus was I drawn into the gravitational field of author, Carol de Giere.    As she described to me the book's scope,  I knew that I had to read it immediately.  And so I have.

Ms.de Giere has done  a masterful job of entering into the mind, heart and soul of Stephen Schwartz in learning to understand his creative and collaborative processes.  She has structured her insights with a wonderful dramatic arc - early successes, troubled middle career, recent acclaim amid some continuing travail and disappointment.  The resulting book is a gift to fans of musical theater and to students of creativity.  Mr. Schwartz was very generous in sharing his time with the author; he also gave her broad access to other key persons in Stephen's professional life.  She also was present at some of the key events that she chronicles in this book, including rehearsals, composing and recording sessions, and a wide variety of meetings.  The book is a veritable tome - chock full of interviews, conversations, commentaries, analyses and examples from Schwartz's vast oeuvre of music and lyrics spanning more than forty years of sustained creativity.

I have known the work of Mr. Schwartz almost from the beginning of his career.  I remember vividly reveling in performances of the Boston production of Godspell.  I made the trek to NYC to see Pippin during its five year run from 1972-1977.  I saw an early student version of Children of Eden at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts.  I took in a performance of Wicked in London.  Despite my rather extensive knowledge of his work, I knew little about his professional pilgrimage or about the many forms of "gravity" that he needed to defy in order to soar to the creative heights that he has attained over the years.  This book fills in many of the missing pieces in the puzzle that is the life and career of Stephen Schwartz.

Scattered throughout the book are small sections that the author calls "Creativity Notes."  These asides and added layers of insight shine spotlights on specific aspects of the creative process as Schwartz has come to understand it and to practice it.  I would like to share one such bit of "frosting on the cake," from a section called "Emotional Truth As a Touchstone":

"What I've learned as a writer is that the more I can get to my own emotional truth, the more a song is actually about me, thinly disguised as an Indian princess or the hunchback of Notre Dame or other characters, oddly enough, the more it communicates universally.  For the most personal songs I've ever written, I've had people come up to me and say, 'How could you possibly have known that?  I felt like you read my diary.'  It's really an interesting phenomenon, and of course it makes our job as songwriters a lot easier.  I have this joke where people ask, 'How do you write a song?' and I say, 'Tell the truth and make it rhyme.'  But that's really it.  The more you can tell the truth, the more it resonates with others.  Of all the lessons about songwriting I've learned over time, that's been the most revelatory for me.  I didn't actually go in knowing that.  I had to learn it from experience." (Page 127)

It is clear that Schwartz learned to trust the author enough to be emotionally honest with her about the bumps and potholes he has encountered along the road he has walked.  She has turned that trust into a book that reveals the complexities of the man who has given us so many memorable tunes, lyrics, harmonies and rhythms  - on stage, in the movies and in the albums he has recorded. Ms. de Giere has added her own layer of artistry to the telling of the Schwartz story.  On many pages, she has woven in subtle contextualized puns and allusions that challenge the discerning reader not to speed too quickly through the prose lest he miss a well-conceived turn of phrase.  Here is a wonderful example that is found in the section of the book in which Schwartz is involved in negotiations with DreamWorks to write music for The Prince of Egypt:

"Disney gave him an ultimatum: Be exclusive or leave.  No matter which way he looked at his own destiny, he realized an exclusive contract would not make his own dreams work." (Page 251)

In addition to offering the chronological arc that follows Schwartz's career up to the Broadway run of Wicked, the author has thrown in a number of additional "free prizes" inside this cereal box.  She has added almost 100 pages of extras.  For example, "About An Author and a Songwriter" describes the growing collaboration between Schwartz and de Giere in pulling together the raw material that eventually was transformed into this finished work of literature about a still unfinished career.  Carol  might well have entitled the section that describes her relationship with the composer "The Wizard and I," for it is clear that despite the many human traits to which he confesses - including being a very difficult collaborator with whom to work - that he has performed as a perfect wizard in creating worlds that we love to visit and inhabit.

"I thought there would be more plumes."  Prince Pippin utters those words in the midst of post-battle disillusionment.  Schwartz appropriates these same words for himself in reflecting on his failure - to date - to garner a Tony Award or to be enshrined in the Broadway Hall of Fame housed in the Gershwin Theater that is the New York venue for Wicked.  I read those words with a touch of sadness, but also with a profound appreciation for Schwartz's resilience and his unwillingness to be dragged down by the lack of universal approbation or acclaim.  I am deeply grateful for his willingness to continue Defying Gravity - even as Pippin returns triumphantly to Broadway.

This book takes its place alongside other treasured works that allow us to appreciate just how much it costs to create art that is honest.

Enjoy!

Al