Misguided Leadership by Coby Goodrich

             The small stage held many big ideas, but many of the ideas failed to communicate. On the 11^th of a beautiful March day (the first after many days of cold snow), we traveled into Providence just after breakfast to watch the show The Glass Menagerie. It took place on a small open stage, with the audience seated in chairs all around. The cast included everyone seen and heard, from the characters to the musicians, and even the stage crew. The play contained four characters, three of which were family members, and the fourth a friend of the older brother in the family. The family consists of a mother, an older brother, and a younger sister. It is clearly evident that the family is struggling and there is lots of conflict within the family. Tom, the older brother and narrator of the play, struggles with his internal problem of providing for the family and his wish to leave for adventure and escape his demanding mother.  

            I’ll start with the positives. The play was very open in that no character, stage crewmember, or piece of stage equipment was hidden from the audience. This allowed the audience to see everything that was going on around the stage (not a good thing as it turns out for this play), giving the performance a different “closer” feel. The character’s of the play were very believable and carried out their roles with well executed comedy, sadness and power. The talented actors seemed to enjoy themselves, and the play held lots of potential, its only flaw was the director. The director caused many issues with the play. Throughout the performance, there were distractions by actors off set as they were busily doing something related to the performance but the intention of what they were doing was unclear. There were also some stage directions that remained unexplained and confusing, such as characters standing on chairs for no reason, and blowup animals. During a question and answer at the end of the performance, one of many confused audience members asked what the blowup animals had been for. The response was that the blowup animals had been a past idea of the director, and he had kept some in the play simply because he liked them. In the play, the blowup animals had made no sense and kept the audience guessing what they were supposed to be representing. The whole play seemed to be a muddle of the director’s ideas, almost none of them fitting together. The result was a confusing play with good characters but a bad script to follow.

            The Glass Menagerie kept the audience guessing, in a bad way. The play was a collection of muddled ideas that masked the true talent of the characters in the performance. The play left me confused and with a headache. I would not highly recommend a friend to see this play, however art is meant for interpretation and people will interpret it differently. So if your feeling adventurous and don’t mind feeling let down, try this play out. Otherwise, see a different play.