Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is a play within a play. Told from the memories of the character Tom, the play relies on Tom’s recollections of his world while living with his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. After Tom’s father left, Tom assumed the void of the household family man. By taking the breadwinner role for the family, however, meant Tom’s ambitions of becoming a poet were put on the backburner, and his sole goal was to maintain a living to support his family. As a reader, you are constantly brought back to the understanding that what you are reading is not the present. It is up to the reader whether or not to believe the situations that are presented. Before seeing the production of William’s play at the Mark Taper Forum, I had never really thought about how the production elements affected the performance, but after seeing it, I realized that in order for a production to be successful, it takes a collaboration between the text, the actors, and the stage crew to have a hit.
The most noticeable and seemingly significant production element that emphasized this idea of a “theatrical production” was the way the lighting designer, Jennifer Tipton, chose to cast the setting. In the production notes of the play itself, it clearly states, “The lighting in the play is not realistic.” But how does lighting create a not realistic mood? Jennifer Tipton succeeded in Williams’ requests by using an almost spotlight technique, where what was supposed to be the focus of the scene was cast in a bright light, while the rest of the setting was dimly lit. This technique remained effective throughout the performance because the important thing to remember about The Glass Menagerie is that it is a play about memory. Since memories are not always crisp and clear, the lighting matched that ambiguity and haziness that a memory leaves you. In the scene where Tom, Amanda and Jim are sitting at the dinner table and Laura is lying on the couch, the dining table was lit and Laura was lit, while the rest of the set was set in a blue light, or almost a shadow. This contrast not only highlighted to two separate actions that were happening simultaneously, but it also made the audience aware of the fact that what was happening through the dialogue at the table was important and so was what was happening through Laura’s silence, and everything that separated them was just space.
But quite possibly the most memorable moments when it came to lighting choices was when Laura and Jim were dancing and a blue disco light circled above their heads. This element was at first very absurd, because obviously there would never be a blue disco ball, ready at a moments notice, lighting up the room, but this lighting choice brought a play like and almost mythical mood to the moment. In a play that felt so dark and depressing, the lighting in this scene gave some relief to the mood and instilled a sense that there may be hope for the future, if not for each character, at least for Laura’s character. The blue disco light made the scene feel as if Jim and Laura were in a dream, as opposed to a memory, and for these characters, dreams were their only hopes for making something of themselves.
Just as the lighting helped to emphasize the unrealistic aspects of this play, the set design also contributed to that same theme. Michael Yeargan, the production’s set designer, stuck to the very minimalist characteristics that were representative of plays during the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s. This production of The Glass Menagerie was one room, which contained two chairs, a bed, which was sometimes a couch, a dining table and a desk. The front door of the house upstage and since characters had to be seen as coming in and out of the house, there was a silk screen which acted as the wall to the outside of the apartment or the wall of the inside of the apartment. This technique was particularly effective in maintaining the non-realistic approach that Williams’ requested because the audience constantly had to ask themselves where they were. In the scene where Tom leaves the apartment to go to the movies and Laura screams after him, the characters move from in front of the screen to behind the screen, but it is unclear whether Laura is outside calling after Tom, or if she is inside symbolically calling for him. It would have been easy for Yeargan to design a set where the audience was able to make a clear distinction between the inside and outside world, but the fact that Yeargan left that vagueness allowed for the audience to have some input in the design of the scenes, which made the real life aspect of what was going on seem the opposite.
Tennessee Williams produced words and characters that were dynamic enough to hold a readers’ interest. Yet Williams went one step further and produced a piece of art that could be performed for an audience live, were the audience would not have to rely on their own reading, but could rely on the artistic vision of someone else to portray the story. Gordon Edelstein and his production team did just that. From Michael Yeargan’s realistic set design that used elements such as a silk screen to keep the audience guessing where the characters were, to Jennifer Tipton’s lighting that enhanced the mystery, tension, and at times even wishes of the characters, the Mark Taper Forum’s presentation of The Glass Menagerie succeeded in carrying out Tennessee William’s desire to create a new type of theater.
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