The Glass Menagerie [DVD]

The play is essentially a gigantic flashback told by Tom Wingfield (Sam Waterston), who is now a merchant seaman in a distant port recalling the final days he spent in the family home in St. Louis with his mother, the faded Southern belle, Amanda (Hepburn), and his painfully shy sister, Laura (Joanna Miles). Stuck in a dead end job at a shoe factory and constantly going to the movies to escape his mother, Tom wants to be a poet. Laura, made physically ill by any attempt to go out and function in the real world, has retreated to her imagination and her titular collection of glass animals. Amanda is constantly talking about the old days on Blue Mountain, browbeating Tom for his lack of incentive, or hustling subscriptions for "The Lady's Home Companion." When his mother badgers him into finding a "gentleman caller" for his sister, Tom brings home Jim O'Connor (Michael Moriarty) from work. Even better, Jim is the boy the Laura had a crush on in high school, although she certainly never would have said anything at the time. But in a Tennessee Williams play, no good deed goes unpunished.

The centerpiece of the play becomes the scene between Laura and her gentleman caller. The scene is remarkable in that it is certainly unconventional to give two characters so much time on stage alone like this. Suffice it to say that on the basis of this extended scene both Morairty and Miles won a pair of Emmy awards each, for Best Supporting Actor/ess in a Drama and Supporting Actor/ess of the Year (the Emmys have had their fair share of strange awards over the years). Hepburn was nominated for Best Lead Actress in a Drama while Miles received a nod in the Supporting Actress category.

This version of "The Glass Menagerie" has the virtue of sticking to the play's original conclusion, which is not what happened with the 1950 film adaptation with Gertrude Lawrence, Jane Wyman, Arthur Kennedy, and Kirk Douglas. It seems that Hollywood always felt a strong urge to make Tennessee Williams' plays more upbeat on the silver screen. Once you get past her accent, Hepburn's performance is as nuanced as you would expect, and the rest of the cast more than hold their own. Given that their paths would almost cross on "Law & Order," it is ironic to find Waterston and Moriarty together in this production.

Kudos to the Broadway Theater Archive for preserving these fine performances on tape and many others as well. There just are not as many televised plays as there used to be in the old days, and it is great to see that many lost treasures are again becoming available to us as lovers of the theater.

Hepburn is wonderful as Amanda, creating an Amanda who is strong and domineering, yet remarkably dedicated to her children. Hepburn conveys none of Amanda's vulnerability, emphasizing instead her commitment and determination to control the future. She tries to make Laura into her own image, but Laura is so overwhelmed by life that she lacks the confidence she needs to live.

Michael Moriarty, as Jim O'Connor, the gentleman caller who comes for a family dinner, is terrific in his role. An enthusiastic young man with plans for his future, he is also an innocent, not quite aware of what Amanda has planned and unprepared for the depth of Laura's vulnerability. Rattling on about his life, he is insensitive to Laura's feelings, having no real appreciation for the fact that she idolized him in high school and is overwhelmed by his presence in her home. Joanna Miles, as Laura, is almost a cipher, a young woman so helpless that she is at the mercy of life's ordinary "tragedies," a woman who obeys her mother because in obeying she has some sort of focus to her life.

Despite these three fine performers, the play belongs to Sam Waterston. Trapped with a domineering mother and a helpless sister, Tom longs to make them happy but knows that this is impossible. His desire to go to sea, to make a life for himself while there is still time, is almost palpable. His sympathy for Laura is understandable, as is his eventual decision at the climax of the play, and he exudes the angst which makes the play's action "work." Waterston draws all the aspects of the play together, providing the only point upon which the action and climax can pivot with any sense of realism.

A "memory play" of a family at a crisis between the old and new ways of life, The Glass Menagerie, and this cast in particular, illustrate the conflict between independence and subservience, and between southern tradition and national post-war opportunities. Laura, who does not even know what to wish for, represents the old ways; Tom, the direction of the new. A sterling cast gives sterling performances here. Mary Whipple