Theatre Review – The Houston Press

The Glass Menagerie – The Texas Repertory Theatre Co.

Tennessee Williams's first success on Broadway contained the central themes that would define his idiosyncratic work throughout his entire career: Dreams turn out to be crippling illusions, while sensitive loners are doomed to defeat by insensitive, brute males. The palette in his 1945 "memory play" is softer and the gay subtext subtler, but by no means is the resolution any less harsh and unforgiving.

Tom (Tom Long), breadwinner for his failed Southern family, aches to break the strangling hold of his mother Amanda (Helen Myers), whose charms are pinned to the past like a faded corsage. His sister Laura (Kay Allmand), fragile as one of her beloved glass figurines, is pathologically inept, suffering under Amanda's shadow. Tom, for now at least, finds solace with "companions" at the movies, but Laura's fulfillment -- according to her mother -- lies in the futile hope that a "gentleman caller" (Bill Diggle) will come to the rescue.

Myers gives Amanda a backbone of steel under the crinolines...  Long gives a defining portrait of the conflicted brother unable to save his pathetic sister from life's free fall. Diggle's breezy "caller" -- all the more heartbreaking because he's no real brute -- becomes the inadvertent destroyer of illusions. Tom escapes his past, but can never forget it, and Williams's haunting play is one that swirls in your head long after you've seen it.