The great 21st-century philosopher Kelly Clarkson famously sang “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That profoundly applies now to The Mockingbird on Main.
The brave, innovative theater troupe and arts incubator (marking its second anniversary this month), is flying high again, but this time as a phoenix rising from metaphorical ashes.
The nearly two-year-old cabaret-style theater, at 320 Main St., Davenport, was on the first floor of the building that partially collapsed on May 28. The 40-seat theater lost its venue and is in search of a new permanent home.
Due in part to the generosity of Black Hawk College in Moline, its first production since the collapse — – the 1944 classic “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams — is flawless and a tremendous theatrical triumph. It works on so many levels, and is an impressive illustration of the power of community.
“A tragedy happened and the community showed up to support us,” “Glass Menagerie” director Alexander Richardson (who works for BHC) wrote in the program, noting so many staff at the college had a hand in bringing this show to life.
“That’s what I love about theater and community theater in particular,” he wrote. “It’s people from all different walks of life coming together to tell and experience a story. We would not be here tonight were it not for the community.”
The new production features what Richardson (a prolific playwright who has had his works staged at Mockingbird) considers some of the best talent the Quad Cities has to offer, and I couldn’t agree more.
Considered one of the best American plays by one of America’s greatest playwrights, “The Glass Menagerie” features Jackie McCall as Amanda, Jo Vasquez as Laura, Tristan Tapscott as Tom, and Roger Pavey Jr. as Jim, and tells a heartbreaking, beautiful story of how dreams are realized and dashed.
Co-owner of the Mockingbird, Tapscott makes his strong company debut on stage as the cynical, straightforward narrator of the play and a stand-in for Tennessee Williams himself.
Considered the author’s most autobiographical work, the poet and dreamer Tom in “Glass Menagerie” is named after the playwright (1911-1983), whose given name was Thomas Lanier Williams. The unhappy family life at the center of the 1944 play mirrored his own.
Tom is both outside and inside the tragic story, reminiscing about a wandering father who left the family years ago. The domineering, nagging mother, Amanda, later points out how similar Tom is to him and Tapscott expertly conveys this towering frustration. McCall is glorious as the overbearing, chattering mother.
Tom has a dreary warehouse job he hates and lives in a tenement apartment with Amanda and painfully shy sister, Laura, who grew up with a lung disease and a leg brace. Laura is obsessed with her menagerie of glass animals and playing records (the magical new production boasts a Victrola), while her mother wants Tom’s help to find her a husband.
Laura — nicknamed “Blue Roses” by a high-school boy since she had pleurosis — was based on Williams’ sister Rose, who struggled with mental illness and retreated to a world of isolation, surrounded by her glass ornaments. When Williams died, he left most of his estate to her, to ensure she would be cared for until her death.
Vasquez, who doesn’t have a lot of dialogue (consistent with her character), is simply mesmerizing as the tragic Laura, and reveals so much emotion without saying a word.
Conveying internal injuries
Laura’s favorite glass figurine is the unicorn, which may represent Laura since it is unique and fragile, and it offers a dramatic highlight in the second act, when she dances awkwardly with her “gentleman caller,” played by Roger Pavey.
A good deal of the first act is a buildup to meeting Jim O’Connor, who is an old high school acquaintance of Tom and Laura. Jim was a popular athlete, actor and singer who Laura secretly had a crush on. Played with supreme confidence, and a slimy combination of both compassion and insensitivity by Pavey, in the story he’s working with Tom as a shipping clerk at the same shoe warehouse. Both men want to make a better life for themselves.
One of the tragedies of Laura is that she wants to improve as well, but after not finishing high school, she deceives her mother by dropping out of business college – staying out all day and making Amanda think she was in school.
Though the play has a number of references to Laura being “crippled,” Vasquez clearly does not have any limp and Richardson said after opening weekend that was a deliberate choice on the part of their production.
Williams obviously created Laura to be crippled by fear, nerves and shyness, as well as any physical disability. That comes through painfully in the Mockingbird version.
“When we were doing table work pre-rehearsals, Jackie pulled this wonderful thread out of the script that I thought was brilliant,” Richardson said. “While there are many, many references to Laura’s being crippled, there are none that refer to her limp as the reason she’s crippled.
“Both Tristan and Roger’s characters address the fact that her limp isn’t even noticeable today, which helped cement the idea in my mind that her disability was not a physical one, but mental,” the director pointed out.
“What Jackie noticed is that much of Laura’s behavior lines up with what we understand today to be neurodivergence,” Richardson said. “Struggling with social cues, hyper-fixations, crippling anxiety, and resistance to change, to name just a few. And in the time period of the play, the ‘30s, this would have been crippling.
“No one at the time knew why Laura was different, but they could instantly recognize that she was different,” he said. “She wouldn’t have been cut out for work or relationships because there was no support system. They didn’t even have the language to describe her problem.
“And as there’s a wide spectrum of how neurodivergence can affect people, it’s possible that if Laura were real and alive today, she’d be able to function perfectly fine on her own. But that wasn’t the case back then when women couldn’t even open a bank account,” Richardson said. “Rather than focusing on the limp, which I’ve seen so many times before, we decided to make Laura’s problem internal, instead of external.”
As someone who has long struggled (especially in high school and college) with shyness, anxiety and low self-esteem, I closely identify with Vasquez’s powerful Laura. Her delivery is more matter of fact than overly sentimental, which I think fits.
The gut-punch emotion of the Mockingbird production is reinforced by its delicate, sensitive lighting and sound effects.
Richardson is the sound and projections designer, with Tapscott and Pavey in charge of lighting and scenic design. Occasional gentle piano music was written by Micah Bernas and I love the slanting lights on the Black Hawk stage, catching the eyes of key characters. A magical moment appears in the first half as Tom talks about the dance hall across the alley, as circular, colorful lights reflect that vibe.
In this memory play, that trains its lens on Tom’s recollections, Tapscott is a sympathetic tour guide, who says at one point, the magician “gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”
The beauty of theater is that it can both provide a pleasant distraction from thorny reality, or a revealing window into the challenges of real life. The priceless poetry of “Glass Menagerie” — especially in the definitive, assured Mockingbird’s hands — soars on both levels. and it’s magic.
Performances of “The Glass Menagerie” continue at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (July 13-15) at BHC’s Quad-Cities Campus, 6600 34th Ave., Moline, in Building 1, Room 308 (theatre). Guests should park in Lot 1 off 70th Street. Tickets are $12 in advance online HERE or $15 at the door (cash or Venmo) at the door.
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