The program for Glass, Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern’s newest play, explains that it is an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ classic mid-century drama The Glass Menagerie, with scenes from J.D. Salinger’s novels Franny and Zooey and The Catcher in the Rye woven into the plot.
Attention, literary purists: Glass is a collage, a mashup. And it is perhaps more challenging and entertaining than any of these individual stories.
The play takes as its main subject the Wingfield family: neurotic, Southern-bred mother Amanda, the repressed artist son Tom and the daughter Laura, a sweet, crippled introvert.
Most of Menagerie’s original narrative is intact in Glass. Amanda wishes for Laura to find a husband, while Tom dreams of freedom from the dull warehouse work he sloughs through to support the family. The climax of the play comes when Jim O’Connor, Laura’s adolescent crush, calls at the Wingfield apartment for dinner.
The acting by the four-person cast is compelling, particularly Jane Holding’s portrayal of Amanda. Holding is convincing as the overly attentive, nostalgic mother to a daughter (played by the talented Jennifer Evans) who, in her early twenties, still withdraws to her childhood bedroom to listen to the records left behind by the absent Mr. Wingfield.
The elements of Salinger are concentrated in two scenes: the comical bathroom conversation between mother and son from Franny and Zooey and Holden Caulfield’s famous monologue where he states his only ambition, which is to be a body catching a body coming through the rye.
Since the two male protagonists of the Salinger stories more or less mirror the moping dreamer of Tom Wingfield, these scenes do not disrupt the unfolding of Menagerie’s plot. Rather, they add depth to Tom’s character while imbuing him with a strong creative identity. In the original, Tom plans to run away from home to join the Merchant Marines. In Glass, the mashup of Tom, Zooey and Holden unveils Tom’s plan to abscond to New York and pursue his writing. Another type of adventure, but one that would appeal to the original Tom.
Glass adds several clever elements that update Menagerie for modern viewers. For instance, the cozy configuration of Common Ground Theatre allows the actors to hold ‘private’ conversations in an actual car, driven through the parking lot to a transparent screen at the stage’s rear—an uncommon set piece, even in contemporary theater.
Director Jay O’Berski also makes intriguing characterization choices, like dressing Tom in drag, or showing Laura pleasure herself with an electric toothbrush. Somehow, these tweaks seem natural. A family broken by incompatible desires and cursed by fate: there’s reason to believe they would be idiosyncratic oddballs.
On the whole, the success of Glass comes from the devastating polarity of intimacy and distance that color these family tales. One almost wonders if Williams and Salinger actually wrote them together, cramped in a small bedroom, surrounded by dusty books and miniature glass animals.
Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern’s Glass will play at Common Ground Theatre Sept. 15-17 and 22-24 at 8 p.m. and Sept. 18 at 2 p.m.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.