FRIINGE THEATER PRESENTS THE GLASS MENAGERIE

When Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, he was a little known playwright struggling with issues of guilt and regret over leaving a family he loved in order to follow his own path.  That choice had devastating effects, particularly for Tennessee’s sister, Rose. Tennessee poured his response into a play that would change his professional life forever, The Glass Menagerie.

“Menagerie’s plot may be simple but the relationships are complex,” says the play’s director, Rebeca Tomlinson.  “How can you grab what you want, when it will hurt the people you love?  How can you survive a world that you don’t understand?”

The Wingfield family grapples with these issues.  Each of the characters embraces some form of escapism:  Amanda escapes into by-gone southern days, Tom escapes to the movies, and Laura escapes into a world of music and glass figurines. “This genteel family is unprepared to live in a harsh world and so they don’t, for as long as they can.”

The play opened on Broadway in 1945 and has been revived eight time since then, including the current revival which just opened March 9th at the Belasco Theater in New York.

Fringe Theater’s The Glass Menagerie, which runs March 15 – 25 in the Parish Hall at St Paul’s Episcopal Church on Duval Street, features Rebecca Gleason, Mathias Maloff, Lisa Elena Monda, and Arthur Crocker with William Weinstein on violin.

“Tennessee, as a young boy, had been very attracted to his older sister’s boyfriend who was a violinist.  So a few years ago, I asked William to join us for a staged reading of Portrait of a Girl in Glass, the short story Tennessee wrote and then converted into a play, ” explains Tomlinson.  “The music was a beautiful addition to the reading, so we decided to expand the concept and integrate the violin into our production of The Glass Menagerie.”

Tickets are $35 and available at www.fringetheater.org or by calling 305-731-0581.  The Glass Menagerie is sponsored by the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservancy.  The Glass Menagerie will also be presented to Monroe County students at special daytime performances thanks to private donations and a grant from the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys.

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