American Players Theatre’s intimate, subtle and varied “Glass Menagerie”

Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, seen Saturday afternoon at American Players Theatre, is an intimate, prosaic tragedy of a failed family.

A huge photograph of a rakish fellow — the long-fled father of the Wingfield family — dominates Nayna Ramey’s spare set. Sarah Day’s smothering, mothering Amanda Wingfield dominates her children with cajoling, girlish Southern charm and browbeats them with towering rages. Susan Shunk, as the reclusive, damaged Laura, pulls herself in as if trying to disappear altogether, but for keeping the peace between her mother and her brother. Darragh Kennan plays two versions of Tom Wingfield: The objective narrator, looking back at his life with mother and sister; and Tom in the scene, as a poetical, rebellious son who feels as boxed in with his broken little family.

The unhappy household, under personal stress and the economic duress of the 1930s, fractures in a cycle of arguments and weary apologies. That they love each other only makes their situation more painful.

I remembered this play, a classic of American theater, as unrelenting tragedy. It’s not, at least it isn’t as directed by Aaron Posner and acted by this cast. Posner hears the comic irony in Williams’ dialogue. Part of the characters’ problem is their failure to grasp one another’s meaning; from the outside, we can laugh at these misunderstandings. With a little tweaking, The Glass Menagerie could have been a gentle comedy of manners. I’m glad that Posner let that aspect of it cut through the gloom.

Kennan’s Tom is bright enough to perceive the ironies of miscommunication, but to him they are bitter ironies. When Amanda persists in grilling him about his nightly wanderings, he launches into a sarcastic tirade about leading a secret life as a gangster. It the funniest bit in the show, but it’s not funny to Tom. Kennan spits it out in a fury, which is perfect.

Day dominates the front end of the show. Her Amanda is a theatrical creature to whom attention must be paid; I admire the way Day has Amanda step into a Southern Belle character to sell magazine subscriptions over the phone or play the girlish flirt to charm the gentleman caller Tom has arranged for Laura (to Laura’s horror).

The focus shifts to Laura in Act 2. We discover, along with gentleman caller Jim O’Connor, that there is more to Laura than we thought. Marcus Truschinski gives wonderful dimension to O’Connor. His gentlemen caller is no conceited oaf, but a decent fellow determined not to let his early promise slip away. He surprises us with his sensitivity to Laura, a pathologically shy girl self-conscious about her bad leg. He surprises himself by falling for her a little, and that surprise registers in a quick kiss. He regrets it deeply and immediately, for her sake as much as his. He knows it’s a little thing that any girl would brush off — any girl but this one.

The subtlety and honesty in Truschinski’s performance made Shunk’s blossoming and warming of Laura all the more beautiful and plausible. She opens and shines, and she’s lovelier than we ever would have expected. And that makes it all the more tragic when he withdraws and Shunk snaps Laura shut, very likely forever.

In a prologue, Tom, standing in for the playwright, tells of creating illusions in order to tell the truth. This play and this production convey, with great eloquence, a simple truth: Many lives, maybe even most lives, are small and sad. A character needn’t be a king or queen to be the stuff of tragedy.

The Glass Menagerie is one of several plays running into September at APT in Spring Green, Wis. Visit the APT website for a full schedule and ticket information. Click here for the review of APT’s The Critic.