As a phoenix rises from the ashes, so The Mockingbird at Main has risen from the rubble that was once its theatre in Davenport and, through the generosity of Black Hawk College lending its space to them, has staged an absolutely stunning production of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams here superbly directed by Alexander Richardson.
This script is credited with launching Williams’ career as a foremost American playwright. Notably, after its premier in Chicago in 1944 and bolstered by local but influential critics, it went on to open on Broadway and won the 1945 New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award. This is the story of a family abandoned sixteen years earlier by their profligate husband/father. It consists of a painfully shy, almost agoraphobic girl, Laura, who loses herself in her collection of miniature glass animals and old phonograph records, her restless younger brother, Tom, and their well-intentioned but domineering mother, Amanda, who goads Tom to bring home a suitable “gentleman caller” for Laura in hopes of securing their future.
Richardson directs this four member cast who perform a flawless dreamy, evocative, rhapsodic rendition of this classic. Richardson is innovative in his direction in that Williams’ script refers to Laura as being a “cripple,” and every other production I’ve seen of this show has Laura with a pronounced limp. This Laura does not – instead, her “handicap” is her crippling shyness.
Portraying Tom Wingfield who is plotting escape from his suffocating existence is the prolific Tristan Tapscott. As his sister, Laura, is Jo E. Vasquez, and as his mother, Amanda, is Jackie McCall and the gentleman caller who is duped into a dinner invitation to meet Laura is Roger Pavey, Jr.
Another exceptional aspect of this show – accomplished by the multi-talented Tapscott and Pavey -
is the lighting design. Tom’s opening soliloquy describes this story as a dream; they have created a lighting design of many shadows through which the actors move enhancing that dreamlike quality, but broken up by geometric slashes of light evoking a sense of fractured memory of a melancholy event.
The Glass Menagerie continues in Building One of the Black Hawk College Campus in Moline Thursday through Friday, July 13 through 15 at 8:00 pm. Enter the building through the south entrance and hang left where you will be swept up into this tale. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door. This is your chance to help this troupe recover from the devastating loss of their theatre in Davenport .
I’m Chris Hicks…break a leg.