Hamburg Ballet, The Glass Menagerie

Envisioning the plays of Tennessee Williams as ballet is not new to Milwaukee-born choreographer John Neumeier. Celebrating 50 years at the helm of the Hamburg Ballet, Neumeier (who studied English Lit and Theatre at Marquette University) took on A Streetcar Named Desire in 1983. Chicago audiences were given the chance to see Neumeier's reimagining of William's classic, The Glass Menagerie, this past weekend at the Harris Theatre for Music and Dance.

Neumeier's production starts in a traditional way. Before any action, a collection of glass and crystal animals sits glistening downstage. Slowly, balconies, ladders and an apartment literally unfold in a gorgeously lit noir-esque opening stage picture. Tennessee (Edvin Revazov) appears on an upper level looking down on his childhood self— a pre-adolescent Tom Wingfield thus establishing the memory viewpoint of the ballet. This striking moment immediately plunges into the world of young Tom, his artistic explorations (he is a visual artist here and not a poet as in the original Williams script), and his care for the disabled Laura, his sister.

What follows is a long and dense movement-packed first act unfurling the hopes, dreams, and realities of the Wingfield family and their surrounding circumstances. This version, sans any spoken words, and set to music by Charles Ives, Phillip Glass, Ned Rorem, is a cathartic study in seeing with the mind and not the eyes--Tom in his memory, Laura in her menagerie dreams.

The matriarch of the family, Amanda (a rock solid Patricia Friza), tries to remain nurturing towards her two children while holding down a job and keeping the family from falling apart. Adult Tom (an athletic and versatile Félix Paquet) hates his job at the shoe factory and longs to escape their cramped St. Louis apartment. He's clearly concerned for Laura (the extraordinary and gut-wrenching Alina Cojocaru) who longs to, but cannot physically escape her own disability. Laura finds moments of transcendence in her own imagination prompted by her glistening collection of glass animals, or by escaping to the movies—her only chance at experiencing romance. Jim, the gentleman caller (Christopher Evans) shows up, at first as a fantasy movie idol sweeping Laura off her feet, and later as the basketball star with whom Laura falls hopelessly in love. And Tennessee—the eyes through which we experience the memories—rounds out the main cast, all of whom originated their roles.

Watching dreams literally shatter is not light stuff, and Neumeier layers the action, creating such depth through his movement vocabulary and staging it's impossible to see it all. Neumeier has invented a movement style for this world by peppering athletic modern dance and theatrical gesture with traditional ballet. The dancers fall, dive, swirl and reach as easily as they pirouette and arabesque. Through repetition, Neumeier makes sure we understand it when we see Tom shaking a leg, pressing arms forward—hands splayed against the invisible barrier in front of him. We feel trapped in the shoe factory with Tom, surrounded by workers in coveralls operating the assembly line with deep speedy lunges and precise turns until little by little things unravel. Boxes are strewn and shoes thrown about, workers struggle to keep up the pace until a lone dancer dangles from a ladder by one arm trying to restore some sense of organization to the chaos. We understand Tom's drunken night out, his steamy sensual duet with Malvolio (the prestidigitous Lennard Giesenberg), and the allure of illusion.

We join the frustration in Laura's repetitive cross body limps, reaching arms in one direction while her lame leg swings in the other. Her tragic attempts to escape her own body prove futile, she remains trapped time and again. Only in her mind and her escape to the world of the ever-present menagerie, is there relief. Her prized glass unicorn (danced with sinuous power by David Rodriguez) becomes a dance partner, unseen by her, scooping up Laura from behind, shaping her, and easing her across the floor as if she was clay constantly being remolded into a weightless new striking sculpture.

It is only in dreamy moments of feeling loved that Laura's limping disability disappears. Neumeier does by magically removing Laura's clunky shoe to transform her into an ethereal ballerina. As Laura sits among other movie-goers watching a love story, as projected on a very effective two-way scrim, unfurl before her. As she imagines herself in the scene, her misshapen shoe disappears and the theatre crowd gently elevates her above the seats as if the feeling of love has literally risen her above any impairment. It's heartbreaking when she returns to reality, cumbersome shoe and limp restored. Cojocaru's compelling Laura shifts from insecure, fragile one-legged struggles to solid, strong technical balances with credibility and ease.

Neumeier uses the meticulously-costumed corps de ballet to play 1930s townspeople, workers in the shoe factory, the movie patrons, gentleman callers, cheerleaders and basketball players all to great effect. At the beginning, the corps seemed a bit wobbly and challenged by the complexity of the choreography but they soon met the demands. Only the basketball scene could use a little extra coaching towards credibility.

After building a detailed and dense first half, Neumeier gives us a stripped down simple and intimate second act. The corps is gone and our intimate relationship with the Wingfield quartet deepens. Jim, the gentleman caller, does come to call on Laura and the story as we know it unfurls, pinnacled with a spine-tingling simple waltz during which Jim breaks Laura's favorite unicorn. Her chances for love extinguish and we are left with the wrenching image of Tom reaching towards the diminished and vulnerable Laura as she blows out a candelabra one flame at a time.