Rose Theatre, Kingston until May 4 (UK Tour until June 1)
Tickets: 020 8174 0090 (stageberry.com)
Tennessee Williams’ autobiographical play requires delicate handling.
Experimental in form, with a narrator addressing the audience as well as engaging in the unfolding drama, it is as emotionally fragile as the glass animals collected by the young, disabled Laura Wingfield who represents Williams’ own sister.
First seen in Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre in 2022, Atri Bannerjee’s stylised production gets a well-deserved revival.
Above the circular, tilted stage a huge neon sign declaring ‘PARADISE’ revolves slowly, advertising the presence of the dance hall opposite the Wingfield residence as well as providing an ironic comment on the events beneath it.
As Tom Wingfield (Kasper Hilton-Hille) informs us that this is a memory play, he steps back into the past where his mother Amanda (Geraldine Somerville) and sister Laura (Natalie Kimmerling) struggle to keep their heads above water.
Amanda’s disappointments at life’s vicissitudes are focused on the shy and internalised Laura and she persuades Tom to invite a potential suitor home from his warehouse job where he is nicknamed ‘Shakespeare’ due to his literary aspirations.
The ‘gentleman caller’, Jim (Zacchaeus Kayode) offers hope but ultimately emotional chaos.
Somerville offers a more generous interpretation of Amanda than usual and presents her former Southern belle image as an inducement to Laura to discover her own allure rather than competing with her daughter.
Dialing down the bitterness of failure allows the characters to convey authentic emotion and avoid caricature. Consequently, Williams’ memories come across as a tribute to his family rather than a critique and it is all the more moving for it.
Together with Lee Curran’s atmospheric lighting, Giles Thomas’ sound design (with abrupt bursts of microphone-augmented dialogue) and a fantasy sequence repurposed from Dirty Dancing, Banerjee’s interventions are entirely in keeping with Williams own experimentation.
An exquisite production.
