Theater through the ages has put a chilling close-up camera on the sad truth that the family ties that bond too often wound and choke.
Two magnificent plays currently lighting up the new theater season will haunt your heart. John Tiffany’s exquisite revival of “The Glass Menagerie” brings a quartet of brilliant performances. Cherry Jones gives us a haunting Amanda Wingfield, a once well-to-do Southern belle, long abandoned by her husband has fallen on desperate times in Depression era St. Louis. Touching Celia Keenan- Bolger is her fragile, painfully shy, disabled daughter, Laura, using the frayed family sofa like a womb. An unforgettable Zachary Quinto narrates William’s wrenching dark memory play as rock solid brother Tom, the frustrated but devoted, loving protector of both his mother and sister, also trapped in a dead-end factory job. Finally, Brian J. Smith is perfection as the Gentleman Caller — William’s knife blow whose appearance, late in the play, as Tom’s friend at the factory who is the dinner guest so desperately hoped by mom to prove a suitor for her spinster daughter. It’s the “Caller,” whose sweet rapport with Laura as they discover a shared past awakes a hope that melts away with a revelation at the dinner table. This sharing one that will break your own heart — no matter how many productions of “Menagerie” you’ve seen. The dark memory laden mind set of the play is plu-perfectly mirrored in Bob Crowley’s shabby apartment set, Natasha Katz’ dimmed lighting, Nico Muhly’s (music) and Clive Goodwin’s (sound)! All keep us in a shadow world that only goes bright in those pre-devastating moments of the Second Act when hope flies from the apartment in a single sentence. It’s the players who shine in this ill-fated dim world — with the scepter of an outlandish Amanda in the faded ball gown she chooses to wear to that fated dinner — that makes this “The Glass Menagerie” magnificent, fulfilling theater. (Booth Theater, 222 West 45th St. Tickets at 800-432-7250 or telecharge.com)
‘Bad Jews’ brings tears of laughter
At the performance of “Bad Jews” I reviewed, the vitriol of aggressive, loud-mouthed Diana (Tracie Cheemo) — who prefers her Hebrew name — Daphna — had reached a vicious apex in her diatribe against her cousin Liam ((Michael Zegen) who had just missed his grandfather’s funeral (the lame excuse being that he dropped his iPhone from an Aspen ski lift). Now finally arrived in his younger brother’s studio apartment with his “shiksa” girlfriend in close tow, it’s less to pay homage to Poppy than lay claim to his grandfather’s “Chai”— a family relic protected, kept under his tongue, during the now departed old man’s long stay in a concentration camp. With Liam (whom Laura will only address as “Shlomo” his Hebrew name) as fierce a combatant for the relic as his cousin Daphna turns out to be, the onstage infighting had reached a fever pitch when the woman sitting directly behind me loudly blurted “Oy vey!” The audience burst into long gales of laughter that didn’t leave a dry eye in the house.