I also had an issue with Adams’ enunciation: my hearing isn’t great, so I can’t say for sure whether she was speaking too quietly or too unclearly – how long is a piece of string? – but I can say, with confidence, that she spoke less loudly and less clearly than her castmates, even when their characters were speaking in something of a resting state. I had the opposite problem with Adams as meddling matriarch Amanda and Laura Wingfield as her socially anxious daughter Lizzie: from where I sat, I could barely tell them apart, and was bugged throughout by the sense they could be sisters. Or worse, confused, because the actors look and behave nothing alike. The problem is, I came away feeling neutral.
In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether to sympathise with Tom, who, as the Wingfields’ sole earner, is contemplating following in his father’s footsteps and doing a bunk. (I loved the way they physically interact, as one might converse with their younger self when examining memories.) They cancel each other out – even if, viewed separately, they’re interesting performances. They play Tom at different stages of life, the former’s everyman simplicity jarring with the latter’s more charismatic, wily turn. Perhaps Tom is intended as gay, but the cues went over my head, as I was too busy stitching together the poles-apart performances of puppyish Tom Glynn-Carney and snakish Paul Hilton. But it’s worse off for it, as director Jeremy Herrin would benefit from injecting some subversive energy into this staid, straight production. Whisper it: despite the A-list casting, TGM is a disappointment – and saying so feels like walking on broken glass. (Unsurprising, given the era the single female characters, especially, are heartbreakingly confined by social pressures).
That’s permissible, as there’s nothing overtly LGBTQ about the 1944-written, St Louis-based story. And yet, I received little to no indication that this brooding, browbeaten character should be interpreted as queer in this version. His breakout play is undoubtedly autobiographical like Tom, Williams was once a frustrated artist working a dead-end job to support his overbearing mother and disabled sister. The gentleman was talking about TGM’s Tom Wingfield, a character widely considered a stand-in for storied homosexual Williams. “He’s selfish, like most gay men.” Or so I overheard a gay man tell another gay man as countless gay men, including Luke Evans, spilled out of Duke of York’s Theatre in London last night all of us out in force to support Hollywood’s Amy Adams in her West End debut, in the Blanche DuBois-adjacent role of Amanda in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, no less. Magnum celebrates all things pleasure at its exclusive Cannes beach party.Phillip Schofield leaves ITV after admitting affair with younger colleague.Words: Jamie Tabberer picture: Amy Adams and Lizzie Annis in The Glass Menagerie (Johan Persson) Read next
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