Menagerie of Memories

 Once again, BRGS has proved it has an amazing array of dramatic talent whose lights have been hiding under a collective bushel, only to burst forth with redoubled brilliance in the space of the school hall on the night of Wednesday 20 November. The self-effacing billing of this show as a ‘run-through’ by the current year eleven GCSE Drama group of their examination piece, rather than the ‘official’ school production, singularly failed to do justice to a performance of Tennessee Williams’ tragic The Glass Menagerie which was not just more than fit for public performance, but which, in many respects, would not disgrace the professional stage.

The individual qualities of this company who we, the non-paying audience, were privileged to witness bringing the play to life were, of course, well-known to Head of Drama and director of this production, Martin Neve, whose realisation of Williams’ script was designed to showcase these to best advantage. The basic conceit was to have the three main roles – Amanda, Tom and Laura – plus the role of Jim O’Connor – played by multiple actors. This allowed us to view the central protagonists’ behaviour from many angles, adding further layers to the already non-linear ‘menagerie of memories’ which the scenes of Williams’ play attempt to anatomise.  The different incarnations of each role emerged from and returned to an L-shaped seating area on the old BRGS stage, giving the impression that the many different personae of Tom, Amanda and Laura were watching their own actions and reliving their own memories of themselves. This was apt for a play about how our memories of seminal moments in our lives can be a source of both guilt and weak self-justification.

Williams’ particular mixture of stylisation and naturalistic dialogue is not to everyone’s taste and The Glass Menagerie can seem repetitive, even self-indulgent, in a poor performance. However, Mr Neve opened the evening with a passionate and moving endorsement both of the play and his students’ efforts, citing the autobiographical roots of Williams’ work and the cathartic nature of theatre itself both for the playwright and those about to perform his work.

The main acting space, in front of the old stage, foregrounded a number of key props  - visual metaphors for aspects of memory, as Williams intended; two large framed photographs of the absent, deserting father, the unseen presence whose actions cast such a shadow over the behaviour of the wife and children he left behind; Laura’s glass menagerie itself, perfectly placed downstage very close to the front row for the many incarnations of Laura to lose herself in or hide away from the cruel world in; the dining table across which numerous key moments of these characters’ lives were played out.

There were far too many outstanding individual performances to separately enumerate here. From my vantage point in the ‘critic’s seat’ on front row, it was remarkable to see how all members of the company inhabited their roles physically, having thought themselves mind and body into their characters. From Sophie Milne’s Amanda, sitting bolt upright at the dinner table in withering, hectoring, slightly desperate dignity to Oliver Holdsworth-Miller’s ‘angry young man’ of a Tom using every ounce of physical space to convey his frustration and bitterness toward his mother, the evening was full of portrayals which lingered in the mind long after the last applause died away. Most memorable for me was Elyse Newsham’s Laura, whose subtlety, perception and intensely expressive facial acting in her scene with Jim was almost unbearably moving. This was not a vehicle for any one company member to be the ‘star’, however; this was ensemble theatre at its best.

All in all, this ‘one night only’ experience was a demonstration of how the unique qualities of spontaneity and danger that only belong to live theatre can generate a very special, life-affirming, even life-changing magic which happens when the space between cast and audience is bridged by such emotionally communicative performances as we witnessed from these students. All involved should be hugely proud of what they achieved on this very special evening.

Review by Ben Ventress, English teacher.

Menagerie of Memories