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| 'Glass Menagerie' is luminous By Stacy Trevenon [ stacy@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 9:16 AM PDT Coastal Repertory Theatre does justice to an American theater classic in its production of Tennessee Williams’ defining masterpiece “The Glass Menagerie,” running through Oct. 10 in Half Moon Bay. Williams’ writing — crystalline and precise – forms the infrastructure and sensitive and insightful acting, effective visual and musical touches and innovative set design do the rest to memorably re-create his haunting memory play. Williams’ first critical triumph revolves around a metaphorical menagerie of little glass animals, placed center stage and lovingly tended by fragile, disabled and pathologically shy Laura (Elise Karolina Hunt.) Her overbearing mother, Amanda (Roxane Ashe,) steeped in her own genteel southern past, fixates on managing Laura’s future. Fueled by a warped love she cannot understand, Laura withdraws into fantasy. Her son Tom (Peter K. Owen) chafes against her relentless scrutiny as Laura pressures Tom into bringing home co-worker Jim (Evan Saunders) as a “gentleman caller” for Laura. The encounter packs both heart-wrenching sweetness and fateful irony. Hunt, a professional actress, owns the role of Laura, assuming a convincing limp and, through vocal inflection and well-timed gestures, playing the symphony of Laura’s emotions from vast shyness to hidden spirit and deep feelings, like a master harpist at the strings. But the other actors meet Hunt on equal ground: Ashe is frightening, terribly sad and undeniably riveting as Amanda, Owen commands viewer attention as the increasingly frustrated Tom and Saunders beautifully renders the vitally wholesome Jim, the first person to throw Laura a lifeline. The electrifying and ultimately tragic chemistry between Hunt’s Laura and Saunders’ Jim makes for an experience viewers do not easily forget. The set is inspiringly done, with its refined furnishings, dominant portrait of a pointedly absent father and surrounding tulle scrim that reinforces the tone of memory and of looking into a very private world. Appropriate snippets of violin and flute music underscore the bittersweet, refined tone that Williams had in mind. Lengthy blackouts for scene changes that tend to fracture the continuity are the only, and forgivable, drawback to an otherwise fine production. Bottom line: This production is like a piece of fine glass: clear, deep, shimmering, treacherously delicate. |