In an “illuminating” essay in the programme for this terrific staging of Tennessee Williams’s semi-autobiographical memory play, Rosanna Vize explains that when the production was postponed during the pandemic, she completely overhauled her design. A sign for the Paradise dance hall, originally tiny, now dominates an almost bare stage.
The sign glows or dims, spins faster or slower, according to the momentum of the play, said Mark Fisher in The Guardian. Typical of a production that is “as intelligent as it is adventurous”, this boldness lets us see Williams’s “tale of thwarted desire afresh”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Some will find the Paradise symbolism a touch heavy-handed, said Matt Barton on What’s on Stage – but Atri Banerjee’s production has real beauty. The staging deftly avoids a realistic presentation of Laura Wingfield’s collection of glass figurines: instead, we see reflections in the glossy sheen of the polished floor, glinting like the surface of a millpond. Lee Curran’s lighting also peppers the set with reflected spots of light “like a flickering constellation” – creating a “visual sense of dreams, fantasy and their wistful references to the Moon and outer space”.
“There is a simple litmus test for the success of a Menagerie production: whether or not it leaves the audience in pieces,” said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph. By that measure, this “powerfully heart-wrenching” evening is a triumph, in which “detailed expressionism” never obscures “vividly human” performances from a fine cast. Geraldine Somerville excels as Amanda, the “trilling, overbearing matriarchal fantasist”, and Joshua James “finds all the play’s savage humour” as Tom (who tells the story, based on Williams’s own memories). We get a Chekhovian sense of these characters as real and “adrift”. Yet the production also “captures the play’s curious ineffable quality, halfway between memory, dream and something entirely imagined”.
Royal Exchange, Manchester. Until 8 October
-
Maxwell pleads 5th, offers Epstein answers for pardonSpeed Read She offered to talk only if she first received a pardon from President Donald Trump
-
Political cartoons for February 10Cartoons Tuesday's political cartoons include halftime hate, the America First Games, and Cupid's woe
-
Why is Prince William in Saudi Arabia?Today’s Big Question Government requested royal visit to boost trade and ties with Middle East powerhouse, but critics balk at kingdom’s human rights record
-
6 gorgeous homes in warm climesFeature Featuring a Spanish Revival in Tucson and Richard Neutra-designed modernist home in Los Angeles
-
Touring the vineyards of southern BoliviaThe Week Recommends Strongly reminiscent of Andalusia, these vineyards cut deep into the country’s southwest
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
