September 26, 2013
MarkBernstein.org
 

The Glass Menagerie

The ART production heads to Broadway, where it runs across the street from another ART production, Pippin. I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, to have two shows running on Broadway was always an impressive achievement. On the other, ART is becoming a staging ground, and that’s bad for ART and it’s bad for Boston. The last thing this city needs is another reason to consider itself a minor satellite of Manhattan.

But this is a terrific and thoughtful reading. Cherry Jones makes a great Amanda. Celia Keenan-Bolger, who was great in The Light In The Piazza, is another terrific damaged child, and Zach Quinto is fun to see so far from the Enterprise and from Margin Call.

This is another Southern Story: there is a terrible secret. The challenge, of course, is that everyone in the theater knows the secret. This production finds is that there are more secrets than we knew.

Brunch tip: Penelope (Lexington @ 30th) knows what it’s doing.