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Olney Theatre Center
for the Arts |
2001 Olney Sandy Spring Road
Olney MD 20832
301-924-3400 |
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A professional company
A seven play season
Click here to see archived
reviews for this theater |
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Seat comfort
Visibility
Sound
Parking
Handicap Access
No Metro access |
A-
A/B
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w,h,v |
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The Glass Menagerie
May 29 - July 12, 2009
Wednesday - Sunday at 7:45 pm
Saturday - Sunday at 1:45
Reviewed July 2 by Brad Hathaway |
An intimate production of a Tennessee
Williams memory play
Running time 2:50 - one intermission
Performances in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab
Tickets $26 - $49 |
Click here to buy the script
 |
Tennessee Williams' portrait of a woman stretched beyond her
capacity to absorb the blows of life suffering one last shock offers many
delicate pleasures. Produced in the intimate Theatre Lab, the audience is up
close. With other shows in this venue, the term might be "close to the
action," but with Williams, action isn't what it is all about. Its not that
things move slowly, it is that the concentration of the playwright, and,
thus, of the cast and audience, is on the character of the people involved.
Events are mere stimulants - jolts, really - to which each of the three
characters in this lower middle class family respond in almost chemical
reactions. Jim Petosa has mounted the play gently, directing his cast to
avoid over emoting in order to make these reactions feel positively organic. It
is a technique that works well whenever a reaction is given voice in
Williams' script. However, there are moments in the story when the woman at
its core reacts silently. Then Paula Langton, who otherwise provides a
fine portrayal of the mother in the family, over does the facial reactions.
Her glances and grimaces would probably work in a traditionally sized
theater where there are hundreds of feet between the lip of the stage and
the rear balcony, but in this tight space, they draw attention to the
technique instead of to the internal feelings of the character - and
internal feelings are the very essence of the play. |
Storyline: Genteel Amanda has been abandoned
by her husband and disappointed by her grown offspring. Her daughter is
slightly crippled physically but severely crippled emotionally while her
son, the breadwinner of the household, longs to get out of the house and out
from under her stifling control. She places enormous importance on an
otherwise meaningless event when her son brings a co-worker home to dinner.
With her expectations unreasonably high, the failure of the evening is too
much for her to bear.
Williams’ “memory play,”
set in pre-World War II St. Louis, came to Broadway in March of 1945 - just
six weeks before the end of World War II in Europe. Victory was in the air
and yet this introspective look at failure was so well structured and so
gently written that it struck a chord. It was, of course, a harbinger of
things to come. His A Streetcar Named Desire earned him the Pulitzer
three years later, as did his 1955 contribution: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The Glass Menagerie was different in tone than much of that season
which had included a very different memory play, the schmaltzy I Remember
Mama,
that ultimate piece of froth, Harvey.
the escapist pseudo operetta Song of Norway and the Oklahoma!
knockoff Bloomer Girl, while Rodgers and Hammerstein refused to try to
repeat their earlier phenomenal success only to find that their touch was
still golden with the very different Carousel.
It was also the season that Fancy
Free, became the home-front experience, On the Town.
Langton's work as the mother is supported with a
tasteful reserve by Michael Kaye as her narrating son - it is his memory
that makes up the play - and Briel Banks as his oh-so-fragile sister who
collects the glass animals that make up the titular menagerie. While the mother's
relationship with her children is at the heart of the piece, the catalytic
agent (to carry the chemistry comparison to extreme) is the daughter's lack
of a relationship with the co-worker her brother brings home for dinner.
Jeffries Thaiss plays that co-worker here, and while he doesn't make his
entrance until the second act begins, he makes the strongest individual
impression of the four while avoiding unbalancing the ensemble. His quiet
moments with Banks are his best moments.
Within the confines of the venue, set designers James
Kronzer and his associate Jeremy W. Foil take Williams at his word, creating
a place of memory. Williams' script describes Amanda's apartment with a
fire escape and Kronzer/Foil provide
not one but a bit of a rabbit warren of fire escapes and landings. Williams
also said "The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a
lot of poetic license. It omits some details, others are exaggerated
according to the emotional value of the articles it touches." For this set,
Kronzer/Foil omit the dining room table (with its negative role in the
story) replacing it with up-focused lights surrounded by chairs. Also
omitted is the portrait of the absent father/husband. The empty portrait
frame emphasizes the sense of abandonment. The candelabra, on the other
hand, is given the most prominent location down front and center with the
entire set pointing in its direction.
Written by
Tennessee Williams. Directed by Jim Petosa. Design: James Kronzer and Jeremy
W. Foil (set) Nicole V. Moody (costumes) Daniel McLean Wagner (lights)
Matthew Nielson (sound) Stan Barouh (photography) Jocelyn Henjum (stage manager). Cast: Briel Banks, Michael Kaye, Paula Langton, Jeffries Thaiss. |
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The Millionairess
June 17 - July 19, 2009
Wednesday - Saturday at 8 pm;
Sunday at 7:30 pm
Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 pm
Other 2 pm matinees on June 24, July 3 and 8
Reviewed June 20 by
Brad Hathaway |
Even minor Shaw is a pleasure
Running time 2:20 - One intermission
Tickets $26 - $49 |
Click here to buy the script
 |
It
is always a pleasure when a company that can handle sophisticated comedy
takes up a George Bernard Shaw play, especially one that isn't seen very
often. Of course, there is a reason that this particular late installment in
the canon of Shaw isn't often on a local stage. There are so many plays by
the same author that are better. Still, Shaw is always Shaw, and that
guarantees an evening filled with material worthy of attention. With John
Going directing a cast featuring solid Olney contributors such as Julie-Ann
Elliott, Paul Morella, John Dow and some new but very welcome additions such
as Tonya Beckman Ross making her Olney debut and Nick De Pinto his second
appearance on the new Main Stage, the evening flies by with a high
entertainment quotient even if its message is a moral we've heard before. |
Storyline: The wealthiest woman in England can't find a mate worth having
- or can she? Her first husband "earned" her hand in a stroke of luck but
his luck ran out. Then a would-be replacement fails the test. The test? Take
a small amount of money and turn it into a large amount in a short time.
Just to make sure it is fair, she tries it herself. She takes the challenge
of actually earning her own living rather than living off her father's
fortune. Everything she touches turns to "gold" but it is another man who
wins her, one who could give away what wealth he had.
By the late
nineteen teens George Bernard Shaw had penned a host of fabulous social
conscience plays in which sharp characters spouted the lessons of his
distinctive Fabian philosophy pointing out the failures of modern society
and advocating gradual or evolutionary improvements in the human condition
rather than violently revolutionary ones. World War I worked additional
concerns into his consciousness, resulting in probably his last play to
offer new insights instead of repeated feasts of previously served delectables. That was Heartbreak House (1920) and it drew to an end
the long line of wonders which had included Mrs. Warren's Profession
(1893), Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (also 1894), The
Devil's Disciple (1897), Man and Superman (1903,) Major
Barbara (1905), and Pygmalion (1913) among many others. The
Millionairess was his 1936 entry. It offers very little that was new in
the Shaw canon, but it was and is a delightful rehash of previous points.
Director
Going has Elliott as the preposterously named Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga,
temporarily Mrs. Fitzfassenden, the aforementioned wealthiest woman in
England. She's bright. She's flip. And, she's fun to watch. Matching her in
brightness and flippancy is DePinto, such a delight in the entire first act
that his presence is missed in the second and third. Also on view for less
time than you'd like is Paul Morella as a Persian doctor in a fez who spouts
truisms with panache, and Tonya Beckman Ross as the new woman in the life of Epifania's first husband, played gruffly by James Denvil. A break in
polished upper-class tone comes with the third act's descent into the world
of sweat shops where John Dow and Cherie Weinert put a face on the working
poor. Dow pulls this off with an aggrieved sense of dignity but Weinert gets
a bit too whiny.
With four
very different locales for the four acts of the play, set designer James
Wolk uses a turntable rotating in full view of the audience with set
sections sliding on and off and flying up or down, along with rear
projection. Taking just one intermission means that the shift from the
solicitor's office to a dilapidated inn, and, later, the shift from a
sweatshop to a fashionable hotel had to be interesting in their own right to
keep the play from bogging down and to engage the audience's imagination at
the same time. It works quite well, drawing the viewers even further into
the progress of the story.
Written by George Bernard Shaw. Directed by
John Going. Design: James Wolk (set) Liz Covey (costumes) Nicole Paul (wigs)
Dennis Parichy (lights) Christopher Baine (sound) Stan Barouh (photography)
Renee E. Yancey (stage manager). Cast: James Denvil, Nick De Pinto, John Dow,
Julie-Ann Elliott, David Frankenberger, Jr., Michael McKenzie, Paul Morella,
Tonya Beckman Ross, Cherie Weinert,
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