Trouble With Mother: 'The Glass Menagerie'

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WE ALL HAVE mothers who can be overbearing. It's why the direct-to-voicemail cell-phone option was invented. Yet watching matriarch Amanda (Paula Langton) in Olney Theatre Center's production of the Tennessee Williams classic "The Glass Menagerie," one may think his or her mom-nag isn't that bad.

Amanda, stuck in memories of her youthful days being charmed by suitors, is desperate to marry off her own daughter, Laura. Briel Banks' Laura is painfully shy, crippled with "pleurosis" (pleurisy) and spends much of her time paying homage to her shrine of glass animals rather than attracting any suitors and catering to her mother's wishes.

All of this is observed by brother Tom (Michael Kaye), who's just plain bored with life and his mother's wishes for him to find a perfect wooer for his sis.

Enter a possible suitor that could be the dream come true, or could break a family as fragile as the glass menagerie Laura so adores.

Directed by Jim Petosa, the play is a dive into everything that exists in the family's internal shadows — as evidenced by the shades on the haunting and lofty set at Olney's Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab. Taking place in the Depression era, "The Glass Menagerie" depicts a family trying to bear rough times, their own anxieties and the weight of each others'.

» Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney; through July 12, $26-$49; 301-924-3400.

Written by Express contributor Robyn Mincher
Photo courtesy Stan Barouh