The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ first fully realised play, was also his most strongly autobiographical.
So says Garrett Lombard, who plays the leading male role of ‘Tom’– a character that, tellingly, bears the same name as Thomas Lanier, aka Tennessee Williams – in the Gate Theatre, Dublin's new production of the masterpiece.
He explains: “This play obviously does come from the playwright’s life. I do feel that Tennessee Williams is sitting on my shoulder watching every move, which is great, in a way, because I do regard Williams as one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century and am genuinely thrilled to be playing this part. You have to remember that Tennessee was a poet before he was a playwright. And maybe this play was part of his poetic period, though, actually, I see all his plays as poetic.
"But this one certainly is. The language is a total joy to speak, it is written so beautifully. Yet, you do also see the work of the dramatist from the start because Tom walks out on stage and tells the audience exactly what the play is, what it’s all about and, basically, how it is structured.”
Indeed. At the start of the play Tennessee Williams, through the character of Tom, states his aesthetic in a way that would resonate throughout the rest of the playwright's career. He says, “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket. I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” It is a line that could be the credo of all actors.
“Absolutely,” Garrett agrees. “That, too, is why it is such a joy as an actor to appear in a production of a work by Tennessee Williams, because you can only be what is on the page. What’s also great about this play is that Williams fleshes out all the characters. So, you don’t just sympathise with Tom, the young writer who longs so much to escape from his circumstances. You also sympathise with the mother who is a fading Southern Belle and his sister, who probably is the character who is really lost to illusion, though she breaks out of that, temporarily, during the ‘gentleman caller’ scene. As someone watching the play you are probably going to come out asking ‘who was right and who was wrong?’ and Williams doesn’t offer an easy answer to that question.”
Without giving away the plot of the play, here it would do no harm to explain that once, when asked by Melvyn Bragg what The Glass Menagerie was all about, Williams replied ”the need to cut tender ties” and this is the moral dilemma that, in the end, besets Garrett’s character.
“Well, Tom at one point is called a “selfish dreamer” by his mother, and he has to be – because if he’s not he doesn’t amount to a whole lot,” Lombard says. “In fact a character description of Tom is that ‘the way he acted isn’t without remorse.’ So he knows, ultimately what he has to do and he knows it is a little cruel but he realises that if he doesn’t do it he will possibly go insane. And maybe that’s the kind of moral dilemma we all have to face at one point in our lives.”
So, what is that moral dilemma and what does Tom do? Go to the Gate and see!