Blow Out Your Candles, Laura
May. 27th, 2005 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeSo I saw The Glass Menagerie with Jessica Lange last night at the Barrymore (where Jason, Paula, Duncan and I saw Imaginary Friends in 2003, and met Swoosie Kurtz backstage).
General impression: 4 film actors on stage. Everyone was difficult to hear and needed to work on basic stage technique (cheating, etc.).
I tried and tried, but finally did not like Christian Slater's performance. I could see him trying--he wasn't just phoning it in, and a sincere effort goes a long way with me--but he has the absolute worst ear for poetry (after, say, poor Brendan of last fall). I mean he just crapped out those beautiful lines, just threw them away. There should be classes in Williams technique, because there's a real art in how to deliver those lines--they're so stylized, and yet Williams's plays have a lot of brutality in them as well. I was actually angry with Slater at the end--he did nothing with that heartbreaking final monologue, one of my favorite monologues in any play.
Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger--anything that can blow your candles out!
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura--and so goodbye...
Imagine those said in flat nasal Midwestern tones, and it sort of kills the effect.
Sarah Paulson did not impress me as Laura, although I will say it's a very difficult role (there are so many traps in it, so many negatives and obstacles--you have to be lit from within). For one thing, frankly, she was a little doughy. Laura should be whippet-thin, IMO--she is a waif, with no appetite for life, and walks a lot of places. SP wasn't fat by any means, but pudgy. (Calista Flockhart played that role on Broadway about 10 years ago--I would've liked to have seen that. Not just because she look(ed) the part, but she's an excellent actress, although I didn't care for Ally McBeal.) SP was awfully monotonous as well--she waaay overplayed the timid, can't raise my voice above a whisper bit. It might've helped if I could've seen her face--I was in the first row mezzanine--but hello, it's a Broadway house, gotta play to the whole house.
Josh Lucas--whom I love on film, he has a lot of range--was just weird. Too modern--I think the cheesiness of Jim's lines threw him, he was trying too hard to make them seem natural, but for the '30s, Jim wasn't cheesy, at least not the way he'd seem today. I will say, about halfway through Jim and Laura's big scene, they hit a groove--they relaxed, let go and became those characters, and I finally saw some good acting up there from them. The second half of that scene was great.
It took me awhile to get into JL's performance--it is somewhat mannered, and as I said, it was difficult to hear her. But she really got to me at the end. I've never cared much for the character of Amanda on paper--the way TW writes her, she comes off as very annoying and too-easily excited. Also I was remembering the one other time I saw The Glass Menagerie, with Ruby Dee at the Arena--a weird production unbelievably played for yucks most of the way through. The audience laughed and clapped when Jim turned out to have a fiancee--the whole thing was disturbing. Were y'all raised in a barn? Do you have any idea what just happened in this scene? Hooligans. Anyway, Jessica Lange took awhile but eventually she really hit her stride--I felt such love from this woman for her children, such despair, such hope. I think it started around the scene when she calls Laura out to wish on the moon, the "little silver slipper of a moon"--that's a lovely moment and she played it very well. She reminded me somewhat of my mother; perhaps that's why it touched me. I was crying at the end when she and Tom were yelling at each other--"Go to the moon, you selfish dreamer!" and frankly at this point I HATE Tom! How fucking selfish is it to abandon these two people who have much more limited options than you--women could barely support themselves in the '30s, that's why Amanda is so frantic for Laura to marry. She never once talks about herself, she talks about Laura's future. In fact she specifically says "I don't matter, I'm too old." Tom abandons them both and they probably starve to death genteelly, as TW is wont to portray in his plays. Now I hate Tom. JERK. See, that's what a good performance does. Although he does talk purty.
GM is such a lovely play. I'd like to just say those lines out loud. I could probably play Laura, although the role is not that interesting to me. But it is a challenge--yes, as I said, Laura's full of traps, but I can see the temptation of losing yourself in your safe tame little world of beautiful, delicate glass things. Actresses always play the shy--the shy is an obstacle to what she is, it's not what she is. It's not her core. But I love that script. Absolutely heartbreaking.
Random thoughts: I'd like to see Doug play Tom.
General impression: 4 film actors on stage. Everyone was difficult to hear and needed to work on basic stage technique (cheating, etc.).
I tried and tried, but finally did not like Christian Slater's performance. I could see him trying--he wasn't just phoning it in, and a sincere effort goes a long way with me--but he has the absolute worst ear for poetry (after, say, poor Brendan of last fall). I mean he just crapped out those beautiful lines, just threw them away. There should be classes in Williams technique, because there's a real art in how to deliver those lines--they're so stylized, and yet Williams's plays have a lot of brutality in them as well. I was actually angry with Slater at the end--he did nothing with that heartbreaking final monologue, one of my favorite monologues in any play.
Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger--anything that can blow your candles out!
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura--and so goodbye...
Imagine those said in flat nasal Midwestern tones, and it sort of kills the effect.
Sarah Paulson did not impress me as Laura, although I will say it's a very difficult role (there are so many traps in it, so many negatives and obstacles--you have to be lit from within). For one thing, frankly, she was a little doughy. Laura should be whippet-thin, IMO--she is a waif, with no appetite for life, and walks a lot of places. SP wasn't fat by any means, but pudgy. (Calista Flockhart played that role on Broadway about 10 years ago--I would've liked to have seen that. Not just because she look(ed) the part, but she's an excellent actress, although I didn't care for Ally McBeal.) SP was awfully monotonous as well--she waaay overplayed the timid, can't raise my voice above a whisper bit. It might've helped if I could've seen her face--I was in the first row mezzanine--but hello, it's a Broadway house, gotta play to the whole house.
Josh Lucas--whom I love on film, he has a lot of range--was just weird. Too modern--I think the cheesiness of Jim's lines threw him, he was trying too hard to make them seem natural, but for the '30s, Jim wasn't cheesy, at least not the way he'd seem today. I will say, about halfway through Jim and Laura's big scene, they hit a groove--they relaxed, let go and became those characters, and I finally saw some good acting up there from them. The second half of that scene was great.
It took me awhile to get into JL's performance--it is somewhat mannered, and as I said, it was difficult to hear her. But she really got to me at the end. I've never cared much for the character of Amanda on paper--the way TW writes her, she comes off as very annoying and too-easily excited. Also I was remembering the one other time I saw The Glass Menagerie, with Ruby Dee at the Arena--a weird production unbelievably played for yucks most of the way through. The audience laughed and clapped when Jim turned out to have a fiancee--the whole thing was disturbing. Were y'all raised in a barn? Do you have any idea what just happened in this scene? Hooligans. Anyway, Jessica Lange took awhile but eventually she really hit her stride--I felt such love from this woman for her children, such despair, such hope. I think it started around the scene when she calls Laura out to wish on the moon, the "little silver slipper of a moon"--that's a lovely moment and she played it very well. She reminded me somewhat of my mother; perhaps that's why it touched me. I was crying at the end when she and Tom were yelling at each other--"Go to the moon, you selfish dreamer!" and frankly at this point I HATE Tom! How fucking selfish is it to abandon these two people who have much more limited options than you--women could barely support themselves in the '30s, that's why Amanda is so frantic for Laura to marry. She never once talks about herself, she talks about Laura's future. In fact she specifically says "I don't matter, I'm too old." Tom abandons them both and they probably starve to death genteelly, as TW is wont to portray in his plays. Now I hate Tom. JERK. See, that's what a good performance does. Although he does talk purty.
GM is such a lovely play. I'd like to just say those lines out loud. I could probably play Laura, although the role is not that interesting to me. But it is a challenge--yes, as I said, Laura's full of traps, but I can see the temptation of losing yourself in your safe tame little world of beautiful, delicate glass things. Actresses always play the shy--the shy is an obstacle to what she is, it's not what she is. It's not her core. But I love that script. Absolutely heartbreaking.
Random thoughts: I'd like to see Doug play Tom.
