Complications, Always

Because tropical storm Irene flooded The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck, last month, heaping great losses in costumes, sets, equipment and sold seats on this community theater space, the Centerstage production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” was moved to Kaatsbaan in Tivoli, NY. Kaatsbaan, of course, is for dance; not plays. The stage is wide and deep, leaving the four actors marooned in a sea of darkness. Which worked quite well, as it turned out. For this is a dark play about four trapped people, impoverished, desperate and defeated at every turn. Tom, played by Kevin Archambault, wants adventure, romance, recognition as a writer. Instead, he works in a warehouse to support Amanda, his mother, and Laura, his terribly disturbed and frightened and crippled sister. Amanda, played by Lisa Lynds, married the wrong man. Instead of a wealthy Missisippi planter, she fell for a “telephone man in love with long distance.” Her son Tom will desert her some day, just as her husband did. Survival lies with finding Laura (Emily DePew) a husband. But as she tells an acquaintance, “Of course you have complications. You can’t have a story without them.” This is a powerful play, oddly poetical in its language, and devastating as it makes clear that we all are tied by love and fear and hope to things and people and circumstances over which we have scant power. Like loving a theater that gets swamped by a storm. But the Center will survive. It’s just worrisome to think Williams’s characters may not. Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie plays at Kaatsbaan through Oct. 14. For tickets, call the Center at 845-876-3080.