Syracuse Stage’s mission is to boldly interpret the plays it produces, and even a playwright as iconic to American theater as Tennessee Williams is no exception to the rule.

From opening night on April 2 to April 27, Syracuse Stage will present “The Glass Menagerie,” the play that sparked Williams’ prolific career.

“‘The Glass Menagerie’ made Tennessee Williams a theatrical star,” said Kyle Bass, Syracuse Stage’s resident dramaturge, or play researcher and developer.

Part of that interpretation involves projecting images and text onto the stage, Bass said. The play marks the last show of Syracuse Stage’s 2013-2014 season.

Syracuse Stage is no stranger to Williams’ productions — the theater has done renditions of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Southern playwright’s celebrated works, including “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” It’s also revisiting the classic play: Syracuse Stage did a production of “The Glass Menagerie” back in 1999.

As dramaturge for the production, Bass was charged with interpreting William’s original work for Syracuse Stage’s play.

“It’s exciting,” Bass said. “If you do a play the same way all the time, it’s the quickest way to have it die.”

Of Williams’ lengthy list of writing credits, “The Glass Menagerie” is one of the most semi-biographical, featuring characters based on his mother, his sister and himself. But Bass stressed that the play is not an all-out autobiography.

“We’re not telling the story of Tennessee Williams,” he said. “We’re telling the story of Tom Wingfield. It’s a play about memory, not just a historical point in time.”

The plot recounts narrator Tom Wingfield’s recollections about his mother Amanda’s fixation on finding a suitor for his insecure sister, Laura. The show first premiered in 1944 before making the leap to Broadway in 1945, bringing Williams with it into the limelight.

Timothy Bond, the producing artistic director of Syracuse Stage and SU Drama, will direct the play’s cast of four. The cast features Joseph Midyett as Tom Wingfield, Elizabeth Hess as Amanda Wingfield, Adriana Gaviria as Laura Wingfield and Michael Kirby as the Gentleman Caller.

When “The Glass Menagerie” became Williams’ first major hit, the playwright gave half of the royalties to his mother. The play was a reimagining of Williams’ “Portrait of a Girl in Glass,” a short story he penned in 1943 before being published in 1948.

Williams also based the play on a screenplay he wrote while contracted by MGM, called “The Gentleman Caller,” which is also the name of one of the play’s four major characters. While writing the screenplay, the playwright pictured Judy Garland playing Laura.

Tickets for Syracuse Stage’s production of “The Glass Menagerie” range from $30–52. Rush tickets will also be available on performance days for $18 for theatergoers with valid student IDs.

Bass said Syracuse Stage explored the diversity of the play as part of its interpretation, though the show still follows the story, setting and themes established by Williams in its original form.

“The play really speaks about the human truth,” Bass said.

Published on April 3, 2014 at 1:00 am

Contact Erik: ervanrhe@syr.edu | @therealvandyman