Usually when in France, I prefer to see plays written in French, or others I rarely if ever get to see elsewhere, or plays done in English for a bilingual audience. When a classic is offered by a noteworthy or unusual group, director or whatever, though, the promise of an unusual production then becomes a temptation I can't resist. Not only has The Glass Menagerie been frequently "on" in France, there is even a Paris theater named after the play! So it took the desire to see Irina Brook's interpretation to make me take it in. And a different experience it is! Still a memory play, it's wrapped in burlap-beige, the color of the Wingfield apartment's sparse furnishings. Not lantern slides but moving projections, usually of the absent father in his youth or a colorful swirl of glass animals, appear on the back curtain. Out of a slit appear mother Amanda and sister Laura (and eventually her dream boy) as evoked by Tom. Grey-haired, he enters the action when he doffs the jacket of his merchant marine uniform.
As in Williams' early story, "The Gentleman Caller," which he then fleshed out dramatically, the action centers on Laura. In Brook's version, the time isn't Williams' 1930s (the time remembered when the play premiered mid-`40s) but the 1950s. Amanda, the well-manicured mother and aging Southern belle, looks rather young and not too hard up in a dreary brown but French-tailored dress (though Laura does have a patch on her skirt). There isn't a clue the setting is St. Louis (which neither director nor staff appear to know anything about) in more than one room with a fire escape right across from a ballroom. The music spans decades.
By drastically cutting out what is going on in the rest of the world, shortening mother-son conflicts and reducing the complexity of the mother (including her efforts to satisfy a desperate need for money by selling magazine subscriptions), Brook places all the emphasis on Laura and what leads up to and happens during the visit of her Gentleman Caller. Thankfully, plain Romane Bohringer meets the challenge, seeming frail despite big bones. Her shyness is so painful, one fears catching it. In an early vision of high school hero Jim, the only man she's kept secretly in her heart, her eyes first brighten. From her mother's rebukes, she flings herself on her victrola as if it would embrace her in place of the father whose records she plays. Her minor stumble seems a major accident.
When Tom, to quash Amanda's nagging, invites his friend from work for dinner and Jim comes, Laura's realization of his physical presence is tentative. Gradually, warmth seems to come into her body, her cheeks flush, eyes sparkle. Her speech becomes more confident. And how he contributes to that! Samuel Jouy is perfect (except for his hair, much too long for the period, even if slicked down) as the guy whose glory days didn't last but is eagerly trying to do something about it. To get out of the shoe warehouse, the rock-bottom employment he shares with Tom, Jim O'Connor is building up his confidence and taking public speaking. Obviously, he's been so convinced of his power to convince others, he naturally tries it out on Laura. But when his confidence boosting brings them through a whirl to a kiss, he realizes he has gone too far. In their dance, Laura's unique glass unicorn has been broken (like her). For Jim, it's time to get back to normal (symbolized by a girlfriend who's returning from out of town). Tom, too, awaits a "normality" away from home. But the memory of Laura still haunts him, and in Bohringer's exquisite performance, us as well. If he seems a bit too old and carpy throughout, if Amanda rates little sympathy, well, that comes from a new interpretation of an American classic outside America. Thanks to the translator, despite cuts, Williams' style comes through transparently.
