Best Performance In The Play example essay topic

'The Glass Menagerie' is a relatively long play (1 hour 50 minutes) by Tennessee Williams, based around a recollection of events in a man's family life. Directed by Peter Green, it was performed in the Bakehouse Theatre, a small, intimate theatre seating only about 50-60 people (quite uncomfortably). As there were only four performers in this play, you got to see each character frequently, which allowed a bond to be formed between yourself and the characters. Tom Wingfield, played by Nathan O'Keefe, narrates the play, as his character is remembering past events involving his sister Laura and his mother Amanda. Nathan played the part with great enthusiasm and passion in the more intense scenes with his mother. His accent slipped quite a few times, but other than that, the performance was well rounded.

The character of Laura was portrayed fairly badly. She did not limp, which made it hard to understand that she was crippled once, and she did not carry an accent like the other characters. The actress, Tina Mitchell, looked too young to fit the part, but seemingly did her best to play the difficult role of Laura. Sheila Duncan played Amanda Wingfield quite well.

She seemed to fit the part and besides stumbling on her lines and dropping her accent a few times, it was overall a good performance. Perhaps the best performance in the play was given by Matt Russell, who played Jim O'Connor, Tom's friend from work and Laura's first 'gentlemen caller'. He played the part well and was very convincing in his portrayal of this character. The plot is basically the telling of the past events, which led to Tom's departure from the family. It starts with Tom introducing the play as his memory of the past, and then goes to the family eating dinner. This scene is where you find out just how much Amanda's picking is driving Tom away.

It persists throughout the play, up until the moment when Tom is asked by his mother to bring a nice man home to call on Laura. It starts again right after that. Slowly you can see Tom reaching his boiling point, which is pushed to the limit on the evening of the Gentleman caller. After Jim and Laura have their private moment in which she finds out he is engaged, Amanda accuses Tom of playing a trick on them. Tom leaves after this. The play ends with Tom describing how everywhere he goes he is reminded of his sister and his loyalty to her.

Perhaps the best part of the play was the lighting. It enhanced the features of the actors and caused them to appear doll-like in the first scene. The photo of Tom and Laura's father was focused on with the light and allowed the audience to see and understand the meaning and importance of that photo more clearly. The set, I thought was fairly confusing as I couldn't work out why they had lots of shoeboxes in their house.

I later realised this was because Tom was also remembering his time working in the shoe factory. I thought that this was a bit pointless as there are no actual scenes in the shoe factory. Much more detail could " ve been used if the shoeboxes were not in the way. I personally did not relate well to this play as the main ideas are about failed dreams of older people. As I am still young, this did not appeal very much to me. I thought the play was fairly boring as the story is fairly slow.

I would say it is aimed at year twelves and above. Overall it was a well-rounded performance with many good ideals and themes. I recommend people who like long, monotonous performances to see this. I think that it went for too long, but I like the fact that they didn't alter Tennessee Williams original script.