The Glass Menagerie: Shared Experience (Oxford Playhouse)

There's a point halfway through this production when Amanda Wingfield, in a flurry of frantic cleaning prior to the arrival of the longed-for gentleman caller for her daughter, absentmindedly dusts her son as well as the furniture on which he's sitting. She's in the midle of another of her overwrought monologues to the exasperation of Tom. It's a very funny moment and one amongst many that centres on the discrepency between Tom's hopes and dreams and those of his mother. Tom looks enviously towards the future while Amanda harks back to her Southern belle past. In fact past and present coexist onstage. Tom in the "present" in effect presents the main action and occasionally his present self slips into the past, speaking the lines that will be repeated seconds later by others. Within this past there are other manifestations of Amanda's memories (dancing with an old suitor, being swept off her feet by her errant husband-to-be) often accompanied by slowed-down film footage projected onto a screen at the back of the set. It all nicely illustrates the slippage between past and present. The suffocating nature of the family home is all too evident and it's painfully obvious why Tom longs to escape. The beautifully judged final act briefly holds out hope for his fragile, painfully shy sister as she visibly blossoms under the attentions of the gentleman caller (initially appearing a blow-hard, he actually turns out to be kind and pereceptive). It's the only time we see Laura laugh, and for once she starts to interact with another person in a normal manner, which makes the denouement all the more devastating.