THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701160111
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: John Harper
LENGTH: 47 lines
Tennessee Williams' ``The Glass Menagerie,'' one of the American theater's greatest soap operas, will be the Theatre of Dare's winter production.
The cast features Hatteras resident Chris Suttle as Tom Wingfield, the idealistic brother in a splintered Southern family. Williams didn't coin the phrase ``dysfunctional family,'' but he certainly defined it in a body of work that includes ``Cat On A Hot Tin Roof'' and ``A Streetcar Named Desire.''
Veteran Theatre of Dare player Stephanie Spence has the role of fading Southern belle Amanda Wingfield, Tom's mother. Manteo High School senior Meghan Mulhearn, in her Theatre of Dare debut, plays Laura Wingfield, who is lame and lives in a fragile dream world.
``This is a true drama,'' says director James Gibbs of Manteo. ``There are humorous elements in it, but it's thought-provoking.''
Gibbs is directing his first play for the community theater group. Before moving to the Outer Banks in 1994, he directed ``The Actor's Nightmare'' and ``The Odd Couple'' for Elizabeth City State's University Players. Gibbs also performed in ``The Unveiled'' and ``The Odd Couple'' as a member of the Encore Theatre Company in Elizabeth City.
Williams' greatest gift as a playwright may have been his ability to portray violent passions in ordinary people. Not exactly the stuff you would expect from a community theater group.
``We are really a community theater group,'' Gibbs says. ``We're trying to figure out what the community wants.''
Gibbs and his cast will rehearse four nights a week for the next six weeks.
``It's very much an actors' show,'' says Gibbs, who by day is a historic interpreter at Fort Raleigh and on the Elizabeth II.
But Gibbs says the play should touch the audience.
``Everybody should have somebody in this play they can identify with,'' he says.
Mark Baker, who last appeared in the theater group's production of ``The Odd Couple,'' is also featured in the play as Laura's gentleman caller, Jim O'Connor.
``The Glass Menagerie'' will be presented Feb. 27 and 28, March 1, 7, 8 at 8 p.m at Manteo Middle School. There will also be a 2 p.m. matinee on March 9.
For more information, call Kathy Morrison at 441-3088.
Robert Harling's ``Steel Magnolias,'' the comedy-drama about several years in the lives of women who congregate in small beauty shop in Louisiana, will be the theater group's spring production. And it will also complete Theatre of Dare's 1996-1997 season.