Features Reporter
Photo by: Millie Schreibman
The curtain will rise on Wednesday with only four people on stage. Unlike many other productions that have adorned Robinson Theater’s stage, these four people are the only characters in the entire show. The number of roles is one of a few things that separate the play, “The Glass Menagerie,” from others that have been performed on campus.
“It’s challenging to play in a smaller cast because you have a lot more weight to carry the show along,” Emily Lackner, who is playing Amanda Wingfield, said.
The play is centered on the Wingfield family. The mother, Laura, has been abandoned with her two children during the time of the Depression.
“Every role in this show is a big role,” Colton Pratt, who is playing Tom Wingfield, said. “You have to discover all these things within a month and apply them to your character.”
The hard part about using such a small cast is capturing the intimacy and emotions that each of the characters are feeling and presenting them to the audience.
“It is a very small, intimate show,” Lackner said. “We are only really staging in about half, if not just a quarter, of the stage.”
To add to the difficulty of the play, it is a memory play, which means that is being told from one character’s point of view years in the future.
“As the narrator, I have to have the mental set that I am coming from the future,” Pratt said. “I have to hop out of the future and go straight into the play.”
Pratt’s character jumps in and out of flashbacks throughout the play. The dramatic irony adds difficulty for the actor since he knows things that the character should not.
The play has been critically acclaimed multiple times for its amazing use of language, not just with one or two of the characters, but all of them. Each one has lines that bring out the best of the English language.
“As an actress, Tennessee Williams’s characters are very sought after roles,” Lackner said. “There is a lot of actresses, that you can go to that their dream roles are playing Tennessee Williams’ roles. It’s beautiful writing and poetic.”
The cast of four, along with the others involved with production, have prepared this play in less than a month. Wednesday, the play opens at 7:30 p.m. and continues through Saturday. Tickets can be ordered online or at the box office in the Moss Performing arts building.
jkirk@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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