THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Amy Adams, in her much-anticipated West End debut, gives a fresh and welcome take on Amanda Wingfield, one of the great roles in American Drama. This is no fluttery Southern Belle eternally draped in chiffon but rather a woman who is strong and determined. Her performance grounds the piece and makes you realize this play is as much about fear of destitution (a very real prospect in the 1930s) as it is some willowy memory play.
Amanda's coquettish displays are her safety valve. They keep her sane as she frets about an uncertain future. "You live in a dream" she yells at her son Tom and she's right, and for once in a production we see that she is not the only dreamer.
Adams is perfect casting too because we know her for her vivacity and warmth, lighting up the screen and cutting straight through to our emotions. Here, the matronly figure she presents in Act One - scolding her son for his selfishness and fretting over her fragile disabled daughter - is utterly transformed in Act Two into something like the Amy we know, and she calibrates that transition expertly. We see her joie de vivre and the amazing potential she had before a wrong marriage, to a feckless husband who deserted the family, caused it all to drain away. The horror that son Tom might do the same hangs over the play like a rain cloud.
The other notable aspect here is director Jeremy Herrin's radical decision to split the character of Tom into two, rather like Brian Friel did with Gar Public/Gar Private in Philadelphia Here I Come. Paul Hilton plays the mature Tom years later reflecting on the story and also acting as narrator, while Tom Glynn-Carney is mesmerizing as the younger man, simmering to boiling point with pent up frustration. He's trapped in a dead end job in a shoe factory, receiving daily naggings from Mother and carrying the burden of being the family's only wage earner. Splitting the characters means one actor doesn't have to embody the two extremes of the fiery self-regarding young man and the jaundiced middle age version.
Lizzie Annis, who herself has cerebral palsy and is making her professional debut, is utterly luminous as the painfully shy Laura, fleshing out the character in three dimensions, while Victor Alli supplies sterling support as Jim, her unrequited school crush who unwittingly gets set up as a possible catch for her by Amanda.
Much has been written about Williams' intentions back in 1944 to create a new type of theater which would dispense with what he saw as a deadening hand of stage naturalism and replace it with a ‘plastic' or sculptural approach to design, lighting and sound which would help accentuate mood and be perfect for this ‘memory play'. But there is a curious paradox here, in that often the productions of this that have the most impact are those which eschewed this edict and instead employed some naturalistic elements. Such an approach adds to the impact because it helps to clearly locate the action in Amanda's world of genteel poverty, bringing to life the stifling claustrophobia of that house during a hot summer.
Here, designers Vicki Mortimer and Paule Constable have gone all out for anti-naturalism, and it doesn't work. Actors retire to the sides of the stage, there are no walls, props are under-used and instead of Laura's miniature glass menagerie we get a gigantic, lit, display cabinet like you'd see in a museum. It's all symbolic overkill. It also harms the crucial dinner party scene. Amanda's world view was very much focused on materiality, not having the correct tableware would be a heinous crime for her because her whole life was about decoration and artifice, it's what made you civilized, she'd argue. A production design that ignores all that just diminishes the piece and leaves the actors adrift as if in a radio play.
What stays in the memory though from this production will be a great ensemble cast and the poetry of Williams language which, as ever, is heartbreaking.
