The
Glass Menagerie
by
Tennessee Williams
Directed by Robert Cuccioli
Director's
Message
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| Robert Petkoff as Tom and Wendy
Barrie-Wilson as Amanda in THE GLASS MENAGERIE. Photo
© Gerry Goodstein. |
As an actor, I have been primarily involved in the world
of musical theatre for most of my career. As a director, my
first two experiences were with musicals as well. So, how
did I end up choosing to direct a classic American drama such
as THE GLASS MENAGERIE? Actually, it chose me. When Bonnie
Monte surprisingly offered me the opportunity to direct the
play, I said, "let me read it," falling back on the line I
use when I haven't a clue as to what my answer might or should
be! Absurd -- as if I really had to see if it were a good
play or not! In truth, the idea of tackling THE GLASS MENAGERIE
was a little frightening, to say the least, and in fact, I
hadn't read the play for many years. I also didn't know much
about the life of Tennessee Williams or his body of work,
and the idea of tackling such a well-known and revered classic
was daunting. What new insights could I offer? What does an
Italian boy from Long Island know about the American South
or the sensibilities of those who grew up there? However,
as I read the play over and over, I discovered the characters
to be more familiar than I expected.
Williams based the "inhabitants" of THE GLASS MENAGERIE on
real people he knew all too well -- his own family. For the
first 30 years of his life, he was living THE GLASS MENAGERIE,
and it was from that often traumatic experience that his masterpiece,
this "little play" as he would disdainfully call it, evolved.
The piece is, in essence, a "what if" depiction -- an idealization
of what might have happened had his father actually been the
person Tennessee wanted him to be. Williams's actual father
never abandoned his family, perhaps because he lacked the
courage to leave, thereby proving to be a profound disappointment
in his son's eyes. It is, as well, a depiction of what might
have happened had his mother been left dependent upon her
son and to be the sole caretaker of her daughter.
As children, Thomas Lanier Williams and his sister, Rose,
sought their father's love in vain. "Tennessee," as he later
dubbed himself, was able to take refuge in his writing. Rose,
however, was not able to deal with the shock of outright rejection,
and that hurt, compounded by her later disappointments in
love, gradually eroded her sanity. In 1937, she was diagnosed
as schizophrenic and was admitted to a state asylum. Six years
later, Rose underwent a prefrontal lobotomy (one of the last
ever performed) as a "cure" for her mental illness. Within
THE GLASS MENAGERIE are echoes of Williams's guilt for not
protecting Rose from that operation. His mother, Edwina, was
a woman of remarkable strength and complexity. She had the
gift of gab and has since been blamed for everything from
her daughter's lobotomy to her son's homosexuality. The character
of Amanda Wingfield is what Edwina might have been had Tom
become the unwilling head of the family.
In addition to learning all that I could about Tennessee
Williams and his life, my research for THE GLASS MENAGERIE
included reading most of the Williams canon. It is true that
his plays represent a broad exploration of life in the South.
At their best, however, they rise above regionalism and achieve
universality. Most often it is the family unit -- in all its
messy dysfunction -- through which Williams strikes his universal
chords. All of us can, and will, recognize parts of ourselves
and our family members mirrored in the shards of glass that
make up the brilliant whole of THE GLASS MENAGERIE.
One of the most important themes of THE GLASS MENAGERIE is
the issue of responsibility, and the conflict that arises
in trying to fulfill self-imposed or perceived contracts of
responsibility. For each character in the play, that responsibility
is specific and individual. In the case of Tom, our narrator,
he feels trapped in a life that doesn't inspire or suit him,
and he longs for something more: a life of adventure. Yet
his responsibility toward his sister, Laura, keeps him prisoner,
feeling desperate to "escape from a coffin without removing
one nail."
Is there a Hell? Some say that we are all living it here
on Earth. Nowhere is that sentiment more prevalent than in
the character of Tom Wingfield. In escaping the unhappiness
of a home where he feels suffocated and trapped, he has doomed
himself to another hell. He has traded his job at the warehouse
for one at sea. There is no suggestion that the desertion
of his mother and sister has been sanctified by the liberation,
or public acknowledgment, of his talents as a writer. Like
his father before him, he has fallen in love with long distance,
mistaking movement for progress. He is living in his own Hell
-- or Purgatory, perhaps. Tom is trapped in a sort of "twilight
zone" where he is doomed to repeatedly tell his story in the
hope of achieving an understanding of his actions. Forgiveness
and redemption would be even better, but the more Tom plays
out his piece, the more he realizes that one cannot change
the past. With each retelling, the pain worsens. He cannot
shake his responsible nature, his guilt, or his grief.
I, myself, am a man with a responsible nature. Most of us
are. The conflict between responsibility towards family and
responsibility to one's self is something I understand deeply
and have struggled with for much of my life. So, what could
I offer this play and those who view it again or for the first
time? A piece of myself.
-- Robert Cuccioli
"My greatest affliction...is perhaps the major theme
of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows
me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag
after me all of my days and nights."
-- Tennessee Williams, 1979
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