Deep Dive: THE GLASS MENAGERIE w/ Amy Jo Jackson

Summary

Broadway Breakdown: Deep Dive – THE GLASS MENAGERIE

With Matt Koplik & Guest: Amy Jo Jackson
Episode Air Date: December 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this rich, exuberant, and sometimes irreverent episode, host Matt Koplik welcomes performer, writer, and Tennessee Williams enthusiast Amy Jo Jackson for an in-depth dive into Tennesee Williams' seminal play, The Glass Menagerie. The two theatre nerds bring both wit and expertise to their conversation, exploring the play’s autobiographical origins, its profound impact on Broadway and American theater, various iconic productions and performances, how actors tackle the complex roles, and why this play continues to haunt audiences nearly 80 years after its debut.

"We're about to talk about a gay ass play by a gay ass writer."
— Matt Koplik [03:42]

The tone, as always, is gleefully opinionated, full of theatre lore, pop culture comic relief, and no shortage of four-letter words.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tennessee Williams, Autobiography, and The Glass Menagerie

• Autobiographical Foundations:
  • Williams based the Wingfields on his own family: Tom (himself), Amanda (his mother), and Laura (his sister Rose).
    • "It's the closest thing to an autobiography that he wrote." — Amy Jo [30:20]
    • Tom is even Williams’s real name.
    • Laura is inspired by Rose, whose mental health struggles and infamous lobotomy haunted Williams.
    • Amanda reflects both adoration and frustration Williams had with his mother, a woman clinging to the vanished Old South.
  • The residual guilt Williams felt over Rose’s lobotomy and institutionalization resonates throughout the play.
    • “He had such immense guilt... for the rest of his life.” — Amy Jo [31:09]
• Interplay of Memory and Reality:
  • The “memory play” structure alters realism; events loom larger due to Tom/Williams’s perspective.
    • The play’s bittersweet lyricism, “gentility, a sweetness and a sadness,” stands apart from the more bombastic Williams works (Streetcar, Cat, etc.) [36:11].

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2. Why the Play Resonates: Family Pain and the Human Condition

• Small Plot, Large Emotional Stakes:
  • While seeming “small” (few characters, modest setting), the play’s events alter the characters’ lives irrevocably.
  • The struggle for survival is universal; every family has its heartbreaks and ghosts.
    • “It’s leading up to him joining the Merchant Marines and leaving home... what will haunt him the rest of his life.” — Amy Jo [37:33]
• Amanda’s Delusions and Hard Realities:
  • Amanda’s nostalgia is seen not as stupidity, but a willful strategy to persevere.
    • "It's not that she's unaware... it's fake it till you make it." — Matt [44:37]
  • Tension between moving “up” (to former glory) vs. moving “forward” (adapting to new reality).
    • “Amanda wants them to move up... but not necessarily forward. Jim wants to move forward.” — Matt [95:19]
• Tom’s Escape and Trauma:
  • Tom’s arc resembles a “Hedwig” journey — freedom, but at the price of deep loss.
    • “In order to be free, he has to leave a part of himself behind.” — Matt [51:07]

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3. Iconic Productions, Laurette Taylor, and the Amanda Problem

• The Performance That Haunted Broadway:
  • Laurette Taylor’s Amanda in the 1945 original is still cited as one of the greatest stage performances ever.
    • "All of them, one by one... that's still the best thing I've ever seen." — Matt [61:58]
  • Subsequent productions (Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris, Cherry Jones, Sally Field, etc.) have never quite measured up—reviews always note “something is missing.”
  • Cherry Jones’ acclaimed performance in the John Tiffany 2013 revival broke the Tony curse, but even there, some critics missed Taylor’s blend of “naturalness and grandeur.”
    • "It's hard to live in the shadow of one of the greatest acting performances of all time." — Amy Jo [68:44]
• Amanda: Comic Monster or Tragic Heroine?
  • A “double-edged” role, easy to lean too far into caricature or pathos.
    • “I think Amanda is an incredibly difficult role because... it's so easy for her to either become purely a comic figure or absolutely just, like, you can't stand her.” — Amy Jo [31:07]
  • Amanda’s wit and delusions are protective mechanisms, not just eccentricities.

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4. Character Analysis & Performance Traps

• Laura: The Challenge of Portraying Fragility
  • Laura demands authenticity in portraying “shyness.” Too many actors rely on surface “demure” affect.
    • “You have to play the behavior.” — Amy Jo [77:30]
    • The ‘Glass Menagerie’ (the collection) is her escape: a ‘safe space’ and metaphor for isolation/restraint.
    • Real-life shyness is “fight or flight, often flight or freeze, not just Instagrammable introversion.”
• Pretty Girls as Laura:
  • There’s a trap for conventionally attractive actresses, who may struggle to communicate the depth of Laura’s otherness if they’ve never felt unseen.
    • "There's some that are so invested in the audience thinking they are attractive... they don't do the play." — Amy Jo [101:48]
• Tom: The "Gayest" Playwright Memoir?
  • Discussions on how Tom’s coded homosexuality is handled; older productions avoided it, but more recent ones (Zachary Quinto) have leaned in.
    • “Finally we can talk about how Tom be gay.” — Matt [48:46]
  • Casting challenges: often actors play him “too old” or “too straight.” Both hosts advocate for Michael Urie as a dream Tom [110:16].
• Jim (Gentleman Caller): The Present Meets the Past
  • Jim acts as an emissary from the present, shattering the family’s insulated world.
    • The legendary scene with Laura — full of gentle optimism and unintentional cruelty — represents hope, beauty, and the pain of fleeting connection.
    • “For her, that this happened at all, even if nothing beyond this happens — that’s a win.” — Amy Jo [98:09]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"Do you know what I mean? Like, her sensitivity, which is part of her delicacy and her charm… as I got older and more cynical, I was like, girl, just go to typing class."
— Matt (on Durang’s parody and Laura’s modern-day resonance) [25:58]

"It should be stressed that while the incident is apparently unimportant, it is for Laura the climax of her secret life."
(Matt, quoting Williams’ stage directions) [37:33]

"I've lost a lot of things in the couch cushions before, but never my sister."
— Amy Jo (on John Tiffany’s production, Laura reappearing from the sofa) [119:59]

"Tom’s arc is… he does get a happy ending. He is free, but in order to be free, he has to leave a part of himself behind."
— Matt [51:07]

"Amanda wants them to move up, not necessarily forward; Jim wants to move forward."
— Matt [95:19]

"To be able to do all of that and appear like you just walked off the street... with Williams? How, how, how?!"
— Amy Jo (on Laurette Taylor’s legendary Amanda) [63:20]

"Michael Urie as Tom. Done."
— Amy Jo [110:16]

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Timeline & Timestamps

• [05:38] Episode Kick-Off: Matt introduces Amy Jo, shares biographical background & “Regency Girls” connections.
• [06:04] Amy Jo identifies the play and her Williams obsession.
• [09:35] Williams Lore: Amy Jo details how her nerdery doesn’t quite make her a “scholar.”
• [13:47] Personal Encounters: How did The Glass Menagerie enter their lives? They each share when they first read and saw it.
• [20:09] Williams’ adaptations on screen: why none of the film versions are considered classics.
• [25:15] For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls: Matt and Amy Jo break down Christopher Durang’s parody, family stories, and parody elements.
• [30:20] Getting Nerdy: Play’s autobiographical core & Williams’s relationship to Laura/Rose.
• [36:11] Distinguishing Menagerie’s “gentility” from other Williams plays.
• [44:37] Amanda’s delusion as both survival and stasis; mother/daughter tension.
• [48:46] Tom’s coded gayness, performance history.
• [61:58] Laurette Taylor: The legacy of the original Amanda, myths and memories.
• [68:44] Why every revival is haunted by past greatness.
• [75:14] Laura Deep Dive: Performance traps, shy/fragile archetypes, and actor psychology.
• [87:04] The Gentleman Caller scene—analysis of Jim and Laura’s connection.
• [95:19] Amanda vs. Jim: Up vs. Forward.
• [110:16] Dream casting: Michael Urie for Tom; fresh suggestions for future revivals.
• [116:43] Broader impact: how Williams changed the trajectory of American theatre.
• [119:59] John Tiffany’s revival—memorable sofa moment (“lost my sister in the couch cushions!”).

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• Enduring Impact: The Glass Menagerie remains a foundational text—textured, poetic, and devastatingly universal in its depiction of family pain and impossible dreams.
• For Actors: Beware the traps. Amanda must be much more than clinging comic relief; Laura must be broken and precious without becoming cloying or typecast.
• The Play’s Power: Its “memory play” lens forever altered how playwrights approached truth vs. reality onstage.
• Williams’ Touch: No one else combined poetry, humor, heartbreak and queerness into a single beat of stage magic quite like him.
• The Role of Legacy: Each new revival is measured against shadows of past greatness; it’s both a blessing and a curse.
• Comedy & Tragedy: There’s humor in these ghosts—whether Williams’s razor-sharp dialogue or Durang’s drag parody, laughter and pain walk hand in hand.

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Notable/Proposed Dream Cast

• Tom: Michael Urie (hosts’ pick—wisdom, wit, text mastery)
• Laura: Finn Estrada (“John Proctor is the Villain”), cited for authentic fragility
• Amanda: (Amy Jo’s wish) a late ‘80s Cynthia Nixon; for now, “Why not Angela Lansbury?”
• Muppet Version: Kermit as Tom, Miss Piggy as Amanda, Robin as Laura, Fozzy Bear as Jim

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Closing Diva & Farewell

“Because my relationship to The Glass Menagerie is shaped a lot by Gypsy... I’d like to go with Angela Lansbury, please.”
—Amy Jo [121:36]

[Angela Lansbury’s “Some People” begins to play.]

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For more from Broadway Breakdown:
Instagram: @mattkoplik
Website: AmyJoJackson.com
Substack/Discord/Reviews: bwaybreakdown.substack.com

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“All right. Thank you for listening, guys. That’s part of the fun of it. So we will see you next time, no matter what it is. Take it away, Angie. Bye!”
— Matt Koplik [122:10]

Transcript

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Sa.

[Matt Koplik]

And to find it how often I've tried.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But my life is a race.

[Matt Koplik]

Just a wild goose chase My dreams.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Have all been denied.

[Matt Koplik]

Why have I.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Always been a failure?

[Matt Koplik]

Hello all you theater lovers, both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. This series is called Matt's Picks, and it is covering shows that you submitted. And I did not pick out of a bowl for grab bag, but I wanted to cover them anyway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And with me today is a dear friend. She's making her debut on the podcast. She's a master of the dialect. You might have seen her on film in Dick's the Musical or on tv. And just like that, I sure know that when I saw this person on my TV screen in Carrie Bradshaw's kitchen, I screamed, I took a screenshot and I said, how dare you? Do not surprise me with this shit. Also in Regency Girls at the Old Globe with my friend Janine lamanna. And also my friends Kate Rockwell and Gabe Gibbs. That production. I'll let you speak in five seconds. I knew so many people in that. I knew you, I knew Gabe, I knew Kate, I knew Janine, I knew Patrick Sulk in the md. I was like, why is everyone hanging out without me? I need to get to California.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Please.

[Matt Koplik]

Welcome to the pod. Amy Jo Jackson.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Hello.

[Matt Koplik]

Hello.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, well, the thing about. And just like that was I filmed that last September and it came out in June, so. Oh, And I did. I had to do ADR for it. Cause they wanted. They wanted me to, like, improv these lines about. They're like, improv something about, you know, like to. To your. Your catering staff. Cause I was playing the head caterer, Lulu. Why was her name Lulu? Absolutely zero reason. Um, I mean, not since.

[Matt Koplik]

Not since. What was it?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Epcot?

[Matt Koplik]

Not since Epcot has there been such beautiful name naming, such tremendous attention to.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Detail in the names. But, yeah, so. But I wasn't in New York. I was in San Diego doing Regency Girl. But luckily, Mama always travels with sound equipment. So I was like, well, if you want to pay for me to take a train to LA on my day off and do a session there, we can do that. Or I can record it in my hotel room with my equipment. They were like, okay, well, what kind of equipment do you have? And they're like, that'll do. And then if you listen to. To it, you can really hear how, where it was live and where was adr. But a lot of that is just me in my hotel room going like, oh, we need more napkins. And this sort of thing. Just like making up stuff to be like, all right, I don't know. What do you want? What do you want? Bring out more champagne, I think is one of the ones you can hear me do.

[Matt Koplik]

Amy Jo Jackson, are you suggesting that I rewatch? And just like that, so I can hear where the ADR is happening.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I said if.

[Matt Koplik]

Adr. Asmr. That's what I meant. Adr. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's. Yeah, there's. You do not come on this podcast, the gay theater podcast, we're about to talk about a gay ass play by a gay ass writer. And you tell this gay how he can do a hate crime on himself. Watching. And just like that.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I didn't watch the whole episode. I've, I've, I'll be honest, I've seen like less than 10 episodes of the original series. And, and so for me to then go on and like that I do recognize is, you know, cruel for some people who actually, you know, care. I mean, I, I'm very familiar culturally. And it was like, was it cool to be. The set was amazing. It's. They, they had the huge sound stages out at Kaufman Astoria. And so you walk in and it's all built up a level, like, so you, you have to walk up like, rickety, like, backstage stairs and it's all just, you know, plywood or whatever. And then you go on a set and it's an actual apartment. And the reason it's up a level is so you can shoot out and have her going down the brownstone stairs. So there's a shot that they didn't end up using. Shooting on a reverse in the kitchen where you're seeing Cynthia Nixon being like, the caterer's here. And we did a shot where I'm like coming up the stairs from like the other end of the apartment because it's all built practically like that. Like it's a, it's an apartment. And yes, like, the ceiling comes apart and there's sound men up there. And then you can move the kitchen walls in and out and everything. But it was like, I, you really, it felt like the attention detail was phenomenal. There was a, like the, the, the kitchen has those frosted cabinets in it. There were, there was a Zabar's mug in there. Like, there. Everything was like, really thought Through.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. Well, that's the thing I think people don't realize about the original series is all of those apartments are sound stages. And they also, like, they have to be because you need to move around. Yeah. There's no room. You have to move the walls around so you can get the cameras where you want them to be. People don't realize that, but that's movie magic. I also really loved your Cynthia Nixon impression. The cater is here. It's just. I love. I love it so much. But your impression of her is like if Cynthia Nixon had done either a Kaufman and Hart play or a Williams play, which is relevant to today.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

What a segue.

[Matt Koplik]

What a segue for someone with hairy arms like this. I know how to be smooth. What can I say? Although I guess if you. If you are watching this on YouTube as well you should. First of all, you'll notice everyone that this is not the normal background I usually have. I am in my bedroom because the abode that I am in is having work done in every other room, including where I usually record. But anyway. Amy Jo Jackson, what are we talking about today on this podcast?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

We are talking about Tennessee Williams seminal autobiographical play, the Glass Menagerie. Bam. Bam.

[Matt Koplik]

So for those of you who don't know, this is the synopsis of the Glass Menagerie. As per the dramatist play service In a cramped St. Louis apartment during the 1930s, Tom Wingfield recalls his life with his restless mother Amanda and his painfully shy sister Laura. Haunted by memory and regret, Tom recounts the arrival of a gentleman caller whose visit briefly illuminates their lives before everything shatters like glass. Interesting wordplay. Not mad about it. I will say. The beginning implies that Tom is in the apartment in the 1930s recalling all of this. No, no, no, no. He's recalling his time in the 30s in the apartment. He's no longer in St. Louis. When he's recalling he's future Tom. Yes, future Tom, recalling. I also love their word choice of illuminate because that is foreshadowing of actual.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's like they've read the play, which.

[Matt Koplik]

Is why we shouldn't be using AI. You need to do the work and write your own damn synopsis.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Come on now.

[Matt Koplik]

Children, Children and adults.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

There's a lot of. There's a lot of grown ass people who have spent years knowing how to look things up that are like, I'm just gonna ask chat GPT some absolute nonsense.

[Matt Koplik]

Anyway, that's what I'm here for. Ask me the nonsense and I'll give you the nonsense.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I'm. I'd be thrilled to discuss nonsense.

[Matt Koplik]

And. And here we are. So. Amy Jo, how did. So what people don't know about you is that you are. You don't call yourself a Williams Scholar, but for Muggles like me, I would consider you one. You. You very much compared to most people.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I know an awful lot about Williams. The thing about Williams is there's so much to know. He wrote exhaustively for many, many years to diminishing acclaim. But, like, there's a lot of beauty in some of those later plays. And regardless, there are so many biographies, plays, novels, novellas, poems, et cetera, that you could read. No. And I. I am not a. I'm not a completionist in that way, but I have read. Yeah. Multiple. But look, this is. I picked this up at a thrift store on my last job. This is called Five O' Clock Angel Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria Saint just from 1948 to 1982, prefaced by Elia Kazan. I got the. I was like, ooh. And it's so good. But this. This is like where I live, where I'm like, I guess I'll pick up a tome of. Of letters to his best friend. So Maria. I mean, we'll get into all the stuff, but Maria was. Was one of his best and closest friends, and she ended up becoming the caretaker for his sister Rose after he died. So, like, this is one of his closest friends. But, like, yeah, so, like, I. I've read a lot. I know a lot. I wrote a show involving a lot of all. All of Williams. Not all of Williams is major, but there's a lot you could. There's some that I couldn't get in there that you could still consider major plays. But, yes, I know an awful lot. I've been to the house, the apartment in St. Louis that the glass menagerie that is based on. I've been there. I've been to the shoe factory, which is now city museum in St. Louis. I am an obsessive nerd, but I wouldn't say I am a scholar because there's so much to know and for.

[Matt Koplik]

Legal reasons, we don't want to label legal reasons.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's all alleged, you know.

[Matt Koplik]

All alleged. But you are very well versed. You know a great deal. I know a good chunk myself. We did do a Williams play last year for Grabag. We did do Streetcar Named Desire, which is a very strong episode. I recommend everyone listen to it with one of her friends, Juan Ramirez. But I'm glad we're doing Glass Menagerie for some reason. So when we did Grab Bag, listeners could submit choices for us to cover. And then I picked it out of our Broadway Breakdown, bowl, whose name is Sally bowl, and.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Right.

[Matt Koplik]

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I picked it live on Instagram so no one could claim that I was rigging it. And, I mean, basically what I said was everyone had to submit at least one play. Cause I wasn't gonna cover all musicals. And so last season, it was Streetcar, the Women. God, what were the other two? Fat Ham and God, I can't remember what the fourth one was. Doesn't matter. Point is, Eclectic Mix. Right. Well, so the plays for this one are who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Goat, Both Al Be this and How I Learned to Drive. So it's just we're. We're going up and down the valley, baby.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Sure are, darling.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes. But I. I was pleased that both Menagerie and Streetcar were submitted. I don't think any other Williams was submitted, which I was disappointed in, because the truth is that I. I am most familiar with, like, I would. What I would call the main three, which are Menagerie, Streetcar, and Cat on a Hudson Roof. Sure, I know the plots and of the other big ones, like Sweet Bird of Youth, Summer and Smoke, Night of the Iguana, but I haven't really delved into them. And I would love to get that opportunity at some point. I mean, I can also just do it my own damn self, but on the podcast, it's an excuse. Oh, yeah, yeah. Menagerie's the only one I've gotten to see live. And then I went back to the library to rewatch the John Tiffany production to, you know, have some sense.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

So steep.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes. I wish I. If I had given myself a little more time, I would have loved to have gone back and watched the 1994 production at Roundabout.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I've been out of town until, like, on a contract until early this week. And then I've been in. I've been working on a reading all week. So I was like. That was. I was like, oh, if I had time, I would go see this Roundabout, because I've never seen. I've never seen that one. Date.

[Matt Koplik]

Date. You want to go? Yeah. Because I do also want to talk about sort of all the major productions of this and all the great actors who've been in productions of Glass Menagerie, because what's fascinating is, and this is leading up to eventually my question of how did this come into your life? How did it enter your Chat. But I remember when the John Tiffany revival that transferred from the art opened and then the Tonys happened. It made headlines for being the very first Broadway production of Glass Menagerie to get a Tony nomination. No production before then ever did. Now granted the first, you know, original production with Ms. Laurette Taylor. It was before the Tonys fully existed. But after that, there had been, I guess, four or five major revivals, all not Tony nominated. I was like, how could that be? And I was looking at all these other productions and the cast combinations. I'm like, jesus Christ, some of these cast combinations are incredible, right?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

But there was. I was looking at reviews for them. I was reading the New York Times and Variety for the Jessica Lange and the Julie Harris and the Jessica Tandy and the Maureen Stapleton. And they all had things to praise and they all had things to go. But there's also something that's missing. And the John Tiffany one was sort of the first one where the reviews overall were like, no notes. And then of course, I found an article from the New Yorker that was like, I have a note.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I had some notes.

[Matt Koplik]

I rewatching it. I still have notes.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Some notes. Not to say that it was. I had some thought, you know, but like.

[Matt Koplik]

But that is, that is what it is. I. It's very rare. It is so rare when I see a show and I walk out on and I go, no notes.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Oh, yeah, for you.

[Matt Koplik]

I have no idea what you are insinuating. I. I am not. I don't. That's not how my brain works. I never have notes. What's. I don't know what you're talking about. Amy Jo Jackson. How did the Glass Menagerie enter your chat?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

The Glass Menagerie, specifically, I don't remember. I have always, since I was able to form thought, wanted to be an actor and a performer and live in New York City. Like my, My aunt confirmed. She's like, oh, yeah. You were telling me when you were four you wanted to move to New York and be an actor. I'm like, great, okay. That tracks with what I remember. So I obsessively read plays younger than I could understand them. I. I was in the 10th grade, in my 10th grade history class, US history. And we had to like pick a. An American figure to do like a presentation on. And I did Eugene o' Neill and fully did a Mary Tyrone speech. I was 14, 15, living my Mary Tyrone, the Foghorns going fantasy. So like, I was just like that kid. So I don't remember exactly when I first read it, I would guess probably I remember having the Streetcar, like the softback edition with Marlon on the COVID from a young age. So I'm guessing I probably read it in like late middle school, early high school.

[Matt Koplik]

Mine is somewhere over there.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I'm not sure the first time I saw a full production of it, because I seen it, I want to say like three times, but I know I've seen like, Cat more than any of the others because there have just been more major revivals of that that since I've been in New York, but. But I'm. I'm not really sure. It's one of those things that, like. Because I was very actively steeping myself in theater because I lived in Texas. I was growing up, like in the 90s. I was in high school and I graduated in 2001. So late 90s, early 2000s. This is like pre Internet shopping, right? So I was just reading anything I could get my hands on or that they had at Barnes and Noble or that they had at my high school in the little library in my drama department. So, like, if it was like a major play, I tried to read it. So I feel like I've always known it, but I must have read it during that. Probably like eighth or ninth grade in an effort to read great American plays. I guess maybe the first time I saw it was. Maybe the first full production I saw was at the Tennessee Williams Festival in P Town. Because that would have been like early 2000 and tens, like 2012 to 2014, something like that. I think they did it. And then I saw the Judith Ivy production that was at Roundabout, that transferred from Long Wharf.

[Matt Koplik]

That was at the Laura Pells, right?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes. And I saw the Cherry Jones, the transfer not at Art. And I missed the Sally Field. I think I was out of town for a lot of that, which I'm bummed about. I'm really interested to have seen that. But they didn't record it, so I never will. But, yeah, I guess that's an unsatisfying answer. But it is one of those that feels like for the American theater, kind of just is in the air. I feel like it's similar to Our Town and it's an earlier one that people will teach. Cause it's so foundational and thematically as pretty easy for young students to like, grasp the basics of what's going on. And like, oops, your teacher has given you a gay play without anyone knowing it's a gay play. Do you know what I mean? Which is always A nice kind of sneaky thing to do when you're trying to. Again, when you're in Texas and not necessarily going to be explicitly talking about that in the late 90s again.

[Matt Koplik]

No, not with those gay agendas. Sneaky gay agendas.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Those sneaky gay agendas.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, they sure are sneaky. I. I'm similar to you. I can't tell you when I first finally sat down and absorbed this play. I know that Streetcar was first for me of the Williams canon.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I think it was for me too.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, just with we were taught Streetcar in high school and we were not taught Glass Menagerie. I don't know why other than the fact that I went to a New York City private school where. Where everyone was an actor or an athlete or a dancer. So already it was a pretty progressive student body. And so I'm the English teacher was like, why would I do Glass Menagerie when I can do Streetcar?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, there's also a major film of it. So it is also the thing where it's more accessible perhaps, and people have a cultural understanding of it that is. That is visual as well and well.

[Matt Koplik]

And a major film that is well regarded because Glass Menagerie, as far as I know, has two major films, both not well regarded and it's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I would not call them major films. Do you know what I mean?

[Matt Koplik]

Like.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Like insofar as what has stood the test of time and become a classic.

[Matt Koplik]

I just mean they were financ. They were really major motion picture. Yes. It was not. It was not done on a camcorder with a. With a thought and a prayer. People gave it some money. Some. Some big names were attached. Gertrude Lawrence did the first one. Joanne Woodward did the second, directed by Paul Newman, which is similar to. When you hear the words directed by George Clooney, you're like, which one am I going to get? Is this going to be a good night and good luck or is this going to be Boys in the Boat? I don't know. But yeah, there's. There's hasn't been a film version of Glass of Menagerie that is well regarded. There's a TV version with Katherine Hepburn that is like kind of well regarded, I think more so that everyone went, this isn't as bad as the feature films. So here we go. But Williams always has had kind of a hot and cold relationship with filmmaking. The. Even his best motion picture adaptations are not super. What's am I looking for? Faithful to the stage versions. There's always.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, I mean, look, Paul Newman And Cat Exhibit A, you know, like, there's.

[Matt Koplik]

A lot there that's like, yeah, well, so Streetcar. I remember I watched the film first again. I also grew up in a household where my parents were very big on me watching classics and they weren't big on censorship. Their whole thing was when I was young and movies were coming out at the time that I wanted to see that were rated R. Often my parents would be like, why do you want to see it? What's it about? Tell us. And I would. I would have an answer. I would. I would just be like, it's what.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It'S up for Oscars.

[Matt Koplik]

I'm like nine year old, me. They went, you can't see American Beauty because you actually don't know what it's about. And you couldn't tell us why you want to see it. Like, all you know is that it's up for Best Picture. That's not a reason. And then so, like, I had to learn how to actually research this shit and be like, this is why I.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Want to see it. You had to learn how to pitch from a young age. Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

From a. Mm.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But so Candy now. Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

Well, you would think I'd be better about pitching my own damn play now because of all this. But no, I still can't. I still can't pitch my play in three sentences or less.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Same hard, same woof.

[Matt Koplik]

But so Streetcar. Yeah, Streetcar. I watched first, then I read the play and I went, oh, shit. Like, the play ends very differently. Read Cat in a Hot Tin Roof, then saw the movie. And I remember being so. Because I loved that movie up until the last 10 minutes when they had to rewrite it. That Mackie the Cat never cheated on Brick. He just thought that she did. And I went. And I was like, oh, what a hilarious misunderstanding. If it weren't for the Hays Code, Paul Newman wouldn't have had a problem with the Like, I don't mean Paul.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Newman, but more like movie stars of that era. And the images that they projected were like, so. I mean, there's still actors today who like, won't do a whatever. But I mean, it was so. Those were so much less permeable, those images at that point in time.

[Matt Koplik]

Have you seen the screen test, though, with him and James Dean?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

No.

[Matt Koplik]

It's like the first three minutes of a Sean Cody scene before the actual fucking happens. It's so hot. It's so hot.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

That's a lot of cheekbone. That's a lot of cheekbone.

[Matt Koplik]

I mean, first of all, I'm pretty Sure that James Dean could turn anybody, because that man just was. Yeah, he was malleable to every single person in this world. But you watch, I think it's a screen test for east of Eden, which Dean got and Newman didn't. Or maybe it's a screen test for a movie that neither of them got, but it's just them, like, standing next to each other and hardcore flirting. Super hardcore flirting. And I watched and I just go, oh, God, what could have been. If Newman was allowed to lean into some of the homoeroticism of Williams on.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

He would have done very well. I think he did okay for himself, but I think it really worked for.

[Matt Koplik]

A lot of us. I can't imagine that man died with any regrets. But I'm just saying what I could have had. The spank bank material I could have had for the community, for the community, for the greater good. But so. So I don't remember when I actually sat down and read Menagerie. I can tell you, though, when I was first introduced to the idea of what Glass Menagerie was, which was. I'm pulling out a different. Oh, boy. Christopher Durang's For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls. Now, I saw this as part of a series of one acts that were performed at my sister's school. My sister went to Horace Mann up in the Bronx, and they had a night where they were doing site specific one acts, all, like, all throughout the night. So one of the one acts they did was For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls. And I think I was 13, maybe 12. And so I didn't know Glass Menagerie. I didn't know that the title was a play on Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. My parents did, and they thought that was hilarious. And I just remember laughing my ass off. And then I finally read the Glass Menagerie, and I go, oh, my God, that's what all of the jokes were.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But Durang is another one of those playwrights that I read obsessively when I was younger, which has very much, very much informed my aesthetic as a writer and a performer. And why I think For Whom the Southern Bow Tolls is a perfect parody is that it is hilarious by itself. You need no prior knowledge for it to be hilarious. That is just Durang's craft and magic. And then you add to that knowledge. Cause I hadn't read it for a while. Well, I told you this before we started, but my BR and I did For Whom the Southern Belt holes in college. My brother Aaron Jackson, we played Amanda And Lawrence as it is in college.

[Matt Koplik]

And Lawrence is. Lawrence is Laura, by the way, for that Laura.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, it's Amanda Wing Valley instead of Wingfield and Lawrence. And then there's the Feminine Caller, Ginny, who is a lesbian. And then Tom. Oh, my God, my favorite. One of my favorite jokes. Well, one of the best things is instead of a limp, Lawrence has eczema, which is.

[Matt Koplik]

He does have a limp, but it's all mental. It's all.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's selective, but the main problem is his eczema. And then he collects swizzle sticks instead of a Glass Menagerie. And that my parents will still say to this day, like, I call this one Blue because it's blue. But my favorite joke in the whole thing is at the end, it's like a 25 minute reduction parody of the Glass Menagerie. And at the very end, like, Amanda and Lawrence are sitting, sat on the couch because the Feminine Caller has gone home to her girlfriend. And Tom is doing his, like, final monologue that he does. And then at the end of it, like, he's been. He's been saying all this poetry. It's like, probably as close to Williams directly as the piece gets. And then Amanda goes, tom, who are you talking to out there? And it is perfect.

[Matt Koplik]

I'm looking through it right now, though, because there are certain lines that Amanda has, because. So we will get more into, like, the weeds of Glass Menagerie. But obviously there are four characters in Glass Menagerie. Amanda, the mother, daughter, Laura, son, Tom, and then the gentleman caller. Laura has a limp.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

She's.

[Matt Koplik]

She's lame, as she likes to say. And Amanda's like, don't use that word.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It depends on which version you read, because that's not the word that is in most of the other versions.

[Matt Koplik]

But.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But yes, I'm pretty.

[Matt Koplik]

In the. In my script, she says lame. And I'm pretty sure in the Tiffany version they say lame.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But I'm telling you have the. Well, I mean, it's a word that begins with a C. Oh, yes, yes.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It rhymes with tripled.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes. And I have a couple versions, and in both of these, they use. Yeah, they use that word.

[Matt Koplik]

They use the tripled word. Yes, yes. But so in the. I was reading Durang's sort of preamble about what led him to write it, which was, you know, he. He grew up loving Glass Menagerie, and then as he got older and he started seeing more productions of it and people talking about it with such reverence and he's like, it's a great play. It remains a great play. I'll always love it. He goes, however, I won't lie, Laura started to get on my nerves. He's like, the older I got, the more I just wanted to shake her. Because he's like, her sensitivity, which is part of her delicacy and her charm. He goes, as I got older and more cynical, I was like, girl, just go to typing class. And he's like, it's not that hard. And he's like, when she wouldn't answer the door, I'd be like, just answer the fucking door. So he channeled all of that frustration into Amanda. And he's like. And I couldn't have Amanda yell at Laura, so I had her yell at Lawrence. And it would become funnier if it's Lawrence. He goes, and. And he writes in the casting breakdown, he goes, you're not looking for someone super gay. You're looking for the male Laura. He's like, if you were cast. He's like, you would want to cast someone who. If you were doing a completely straight Glass menagerie and you still have the character of Laura, but you're casting Laura as a male, this is who you would cast. And he's like, that's the humor of it. And so there's one more. Lawrence goes, it upset. It upsets my stomach to meet people, Mama. And Amanda goes, oh, Lawrence, honey, you're so sensitive, it makes me want to hit you sometimes. You're the top. Yeah, you're an Arab color.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

You're the top.

[Matt Koplik]

You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Freddy. And we're back after some technical difficulties. Whoops. Something I was saying in the. For the whom the southern. For whom the southern bell tolls. Durang had said when casting Lawrence, you're not looking for someone who's obviously gay. You're looking for someone who's kind of just hilariously soft. He said, if you were to cast a gender bent glass menagerie and you were just going to cast a male actor as Laura, you know, point blank. No, no commenting on it. He's like, that's what you're looking for for Lawrence, which is, I think, very hilarious. And. And Amanda has certain lines in it towards Lawrence that I think are just so hilarious, that would be less hilarious if it was towards an actual Laura talking about, like, all the things she'd do if Lawrence and Tom could get married and leave. And she goes, I'm not bitter, dear. It's just that I hate my life. It's so. It's so fucking funny. And I.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's hilarious. If people who are listening know my brother Aaron Jackson, who's a comedian and an actor, like, there's. It was so perfectly attuned to the kind of absolute absurdity that we do. And there's a scene where she's trying to drag him in to, like, meet the feminine caller. And so I'm, like, dragging Aaron through the story, and my parents are just like, if people only knew. They think they're watching acting, but they're really seeing your childhood. Mm.

[Matt Koplik]

It's so good. And Lawrence is in this. This long nightgown or night shirt. He's like, I. I was. I was in bed. It's just so. It's so funny. And so I see that. Laugh my ass off. Eventually, I get to know Glass Menagerie, and I understand a lot more of the Williams canon, and all of a sudden, it just. It's even more hilarious. And so I want to do it at some point. I'm. I'm semi retired from the performing, but I still do it from time to time. And. Amy Jo Jackson, I have a pitch for you. I want you to. I want you to play Amanda again. I want to play Lawrence. I want Natalie Walker to play Virginia the gentleman.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

The.

[Matt Koplik]

The female caller.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes. Yes.

[Matt Koplik]

I don't know who I want for Tom, but, like, I don't know, maybe we get Nash to do it. It's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

And just.

[Matt Koplik]

And just go for broke.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Because I. I always wanted Nathan Lee Graham as Tom. I thought that'd be very funny. I mean, Nathan can read the phone book, and it's hilarious. So. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Natalie Walker is perfect. Yes. Yes. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tonight.

[Matt Koplik]

Mama. Don't try to make me laugh.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I have.

[Matt Koplik]

It's just so. It's so great. Let's just dive into this motherfucker. What's. What is When. When we talk about Glass Menagerie. If I were to say, okay, we're gonna. We're gonna discuss this where. What's one of, like, the first things that comes to mind for you? We're like, we cannot start this conversation without addressing such and such. Like, we need to.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Okay, well, this is where we're immediately gonna get nerdy. I would say we can't talk about this with. Immediately, like, talking about the parallels to Williams own life, like, to. I mean, like, granted, you can. You can see the play and enjoy it without having any Knowledge. But it's the closest thing to an autobiography that he wrote. Even though, like many, many, many, as we were discussing before we started recording of his characters, are amalgams of himself or are amalgams of himself and his mother and his sister, but like. Or meditations on different aspects of those, you know, two people in his life and himself through these different characters. And in some cases, Dakin, but he really did not care for Dakin. So Dakin really is only represented by Gooper.

[Matt Koplik]

But.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, I mean, so I've studied a lot with Larry Moss, the great acting teacher. And so I've seen the Amanda Lore scene and the, you know, the Gentleman Caller scene with Laura and the candelabra and everything on the floor, like, a zillion times in those classes. And a lot of what Larry, who studied with Stella Adler a lot, among other people, talks about is how much, like, he was writing about these women who were also representatives of, like, the quote, unquote, Fallen south, which I think you see really strongly in Streetcar. You have one sister who is still in the delusion of, like, a pre Civil War era idea of what it means to be a Southern woman. And then you have Stella, who is like, I have embraced the fall, you know, and then so Amanda, in a lot of ways, both represents and, like, literalizes this. Like, not even delusion, but, like, the will to persevere, but, like, keeping this. The ideas of, like, well, we must have gentility, we must have this. We mustn't abandon this in order to, you know, in order to keep going, you know, she has that incredible speech to Laura after she's discovered the Rubicams college business fiasco, you know, like, about. I've seen too well what happens to unmarried women, you know, forced to eat the crust of humility all our lives, like, and being passed from, like, relative to relative and all of that. And it's just these were women and situations with whom Williams was extremely familiar. So, like, the depth that he brings to these women who, yes, can be very annoying. I think Amanda is an incredibly difficult role because I think it's so easy for her to either become purely a comic figure or, like, absolutely just, like, you can't stand her, depending on how it's pitched and what's cast around her. But I think understanding that, like, Williams did love his mother, even in so much as he, like, in many ways couldn't stand her and was, like, eager to get away from her, you know, like, all of that, I think helps bring perspective on, like, how you're going to approach a production of this, right? Like, I think if you were. If you were playing one of these characters, you'd be a fool not to engage with the autobiography, do you know what I mean? I think there's just so much to help you there, since there's so much available to us. So I don't know. That's where I would start, is the parallels in his own life. And obviously his sister Rose being the inspiration for much of his work, because she was. He had such immense guilt about having left her. And then his mother had one of the first frontal lobotomies, which was an experimental procedure at the time, in the 50s, performed on his sister Rose, who is Laura. And so she then was institutionalized for the rest of her life. You know, and it's. He had such. Oh, I found. Actually, I knew I brought this over for a reason. There's a little bit. So this is his letters to his friend Maria Saint. Just this book that I've picked up, but it's also like her recollections, like that a biographer has put in here. So this is in one of those little sections in between letters where Maria is talking about Tennessee Rose Williams. Tennessee's sister was the most important person in his life and the inspiration for most of his work. He was constantly concerned about her and guilty that he had done nothing to prevent her undergoing one of the first lobotomies on their mother's instruction in 1937. Oh, sorry. The 30s, of course, the operation had left her in need of constant institutional care. Whenever Tennessee talked about her, he would burst into fits of loud, hysterical laughter and roll his eyes round in embarrassment. He used to cry when he told the story of how, when they were children, he would tug at her ringlets, shouting, ding dong, ding dong. He used to ask me, how could I have been so cruel? Rose often used to write poetic postcards to her brother Tom, Tennessee's real name. She once wrote, tell Tom I love him so much he stole my heart away in the Dark Ages, I. And like that. That is the perspective of the man who's like saying these monologues at the beginning and the end of the play, you know, who's. Blow out your candles, Laura, and who's like reminiscing on this great grief of his life, probably, you know, And Tennessee Williams was a man who, I think had a lot of griefs, but I think a lot of them really sprung from this early relationship to Laura, to whom he was devoted to for the rest of his life. But, like, you know, Feels like he failed her at a critical juncture. And I think a lot of that grief is from whence this play springs. Which I think you need to understand when, again, not to see it, but to work on it. You have to approach it with all of that in mind. Because I think it informs so much of it for me.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, granted. So, okay, as I said, I am extremely familiar with this Streetcar and Cat. I am. I won't say passively. I am well versed in Sweet Bird of Youth and Suddenly Last Summer and Night of the Iguana. And I have a passing knowledge of summer and Smoke and Camino Real. But that, you know, this is to say of my knowledge of the rest of Tennessee Williams work. There's. He has more plays that are. He has plays that are more dynamic than Glass Menagerie Streetcar, obviously, but like and quotable and vivacious. But there is a gentility, a sweetness and a sadness to Glass Menagerie that I don't think those later plays have as much of. And I think it is because this is the one that is the most personal of all the works. And he shies away from the rest of his plays being as autobiographical after this one. There are elements of Rose and of his mother in all the other plays and of himself, but this is the one that's the most of a mirror possible. Absolutely. Yeah. And I feel like that is what makes this play, while wonderful and well produced. And all the time, it's the one that maybe is, like, not as exciting to a lot of people when they think of Williams, but it is the one that hits you closest to home.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, it's also like. If we think of. It's not like slice of lifestyle theater, but it's closer to that. It's smaller in terms of plot. But the things that happen are enormous to these characters. Cause this is the moment this play is leading up to him joining the merchant Marines and leaving home. He leaves at the end of the play. Right. And a lot of the play is setting up what will haunt him the rest of his life, even as he's made the escape that he had to. To survive. You know, but it is. There's that stage direction at the top of when the Gentleman Caller comes into the. The living room to. To see Laura after. After dinner. And the stage direction says, like, while this should seem like I'm gonna misquote it, well, I could just actually quote it. All right. So Jim enters holding candelabra with lighted candles in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. And stands. How are you feeling now? Any better? Jim's attitude is gently humorous. In playing this scene it should be stressed that while the incident is apparently unimportant, it is to Laura the climax of her secret life. And I feel like that's a lot of like what this play is. It's like it seemingly small but that it is. The events of this play are going to change the trajectory of all three of the wingfield's lives forever. And that it's, it's also just so human and everyone has, everyone has family stuff, you know, even people who are like I have a great relationship with my family. It's like there's still stuff there, it's still complicated. And I think that that's why it's very relatable to a lot of people even if their situation is nothing like this. Families in their 30s in St. Louis, you know.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, absolutely. I think to be a person in the world you have, there's going to be pain, there's going to be ghosts, there's going to be suffering in skeletons. Tom is an aspiring writer, aspiring poet who works a very tiring dead end job at a, at a warehouse which is how he knows Jim for the Gentleman Caller to pay the bills because their father left them years ago.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

He was a telephone man who fell.

[Matt Koplik]

In love with long distance and tripped the light fantastic. And so it's up to Tom to be the breadwinner. And he makes money. Not great money but money. Enough money that they get by. And Amanda tries to sell magazine subscriptions and her success rate is very spotty. And Laura is for lack of a better term a drain on the rest of it because she doesn't bring any money in. Amanda tried to get her to go to typing school so she could get a secretarial school.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

Secretary of school so she can get a degree and, and, and possibly get a job. And she finds out that Laura has been skipping classes this entire time and.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

She took a typing test, threw up on the floor, she had to like run out. Like she, she's in addition to having a limp she is incredibly shy, like painfully debilitatingly shy and has been her entire life and which is arguably the thing that that gets in in in her way more but you know, also it that that to var is. Is portrayed to varying degrees depending on, on the actor and, and you know how, how you, how you choose to interpret the limp. Yeah and I think there are, there are various ways to, to look at that but yeah she goes to typing school and feels like, she can't go back because she was. She was so flustered. Also, anything high speed with someone with, like, the levels of anxiety that Laura Wingfield has is like. Of course she's bad at that, you know, but she felt too humiliated to go back. Yeah. Yeah. Easily overwhelmed. Felt too humiliated to go back. So, yeah, she'd walk the park, go visit the penguins every day at the.

[Matt Koplik]

Birdhouses, at the zoo, sometimes go to the movies, like, her brother Tom goes to the movies quite a lot. And with Amanda, Yeah, she has this part or this delusion in herself of the Old south, of the way things used to be. And I realized this with Amanda and with Blanche. Neither were alive, really, for the true Old South. Pre Civil War.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

No. But they were raised as though they were like. As though they were the daughters of this legacy, which is like. Like part of the South's delusion and refusal to shift.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. To shift. To adapt with the times.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Because there's.

[Matt Koplik]

There is a cordial element. There's. There is a. There is a respect and a sense of manners that comes with it that I do understand and, like. But also there's a whole other lot of baggage that is being ignored with that, which, of course, ties into Blanche and Amanda of only wanting the paper lanterns and only wanting the beauty and the glamour. They don't want to think about the bad stuff.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Amanda coming out to this dinner in a dress that she wore to her cotillion that she's had to let out. Like, she. Oh, it, you know, broke my heart that I had to let it out. It's like, yeah, you're, like, 50 now. You're not 17 leading the cotillion anymore. Like, it's all details.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. I remember I was looking online at some of the reactions to past productions because the only three, or I guess four major productions of Glass of Menagerie that have had, like, message board chatter on them have been the Jessica Lange revival, the Cherry Jones revival, and the Sally Field revival, with a little bit of the Judith Ivey in there as well. And with the Sally Field one. One of the biggest issues somebody had with it, because that production was very controversial in general. It was a Sam Gold production. There was really no set. It was a little bit of lighting. They had a wheelchair using actress for Laura. And then there was a lot of conversation about, like, what that means for Laura and what that means for the actress. But when Sally Field comes out for the Gentleman Caller, she's basically wearing a bright pink prom dress. Someone described it as looking like a party dress. For a five year old. And they were angry about that choice because they said the thing about the outfit is that it shouldn't be comically childlike. It's not that Amanda has no taste. It's that the dress is beautiful for a 17 year old circa 1890.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes.

[Matt Koplik]

It is not beautiful for a 50 year old circa 1935. And what she's wearing is a nice party dress for a five year old in present day. And like that's, that's not what the joke is. And it actually makes Amanda seem dumber. Cause Amanda's not dumb. She. You. The whole, the great thing about the scene she has with Laura when she learns about how Laura doesn't go to school anymore and then her follow up scene with Tom is she's very aware of their circumstances just because she talks a grander game. But it's not that she's unaware. She's. She, she is very much a believer of fake it till you make it. And when that's longer working, she's like, here's the circumstances, Laura. Here's why I wanted you to go to school. What are we going to do now that you refuse to do it?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I think that also speaks to. When I say delusion and delu. Grand delusion of the south. Right. It's partially about less actually maybe about a shared delusion and more about a shared agreement that the delusion. It's better to pretend the delusion is real. Like it's better to live in the fantasy and pretend that all of this, we can fix it. When it's like you're never fixing this.

[Matt Koplik]

You never coming back.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's never coming back. You're in a tenement apartment in St. Louis.

[Matt Koplik]

God ain't showing up to meet you, baby.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

No, no, no.

[Matt Koplik]

The thing is we all have those windmill dreams that we, we chase and believe if I make, if I, if these circumstances can change, if I can fix these things, then the overall whole can change.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

The number of times I've had to say to myself like are you just a character and the iceman cometh with this or are you gonna make this happen? And that's a real thought I have, which is why I'm here talking about a mid century playwright with you today.

[Matt Koplik]

That's why you're on the most popular theatrical podcast talking about of all time, not just of current day ever. The most popular theatre podcast anyone's ever made it whatsoever. But the thing about. And Amanda's delusion also does apply to present day because she sees Laura and Tom has to say to her, like, we see Laura through our lives. We love her. Yeah, yeah, we love her. And we've known her for so long. But there are ways in which the world would view her without knowing her very well that we have to accept. And Amanda doesn't know what he means at first. And he's like, she is pretty. Like, let's be honest, she is a pretty girl, but she's not this, like, stunning beauty that will get stopped on the street. She's got a softness about her. She's got a delicate fragility about her that doesn't really stop men in their tracks. And because she's so inward, she doesn't project the qualities about herself that are good. And he also says without it, without directly saying. Tom believes that there's something about Laura that's a little touched, that it's not just. He's like. The shyness is so.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

He calls her peculiar.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Which Amanda takes offense to that use of that word.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Because also, like, it's so brilliantly written in that you have this mother who was the belle of the ball, so outgoing, and it's like, how did I wind up with this gay son and this absolutely shy child? Like, what did I do? How did this happen? Like, her not understanding her children on the most foundational level. Cause they just. They don't seem like her to her, I think, in a lot of ways.

[Matt Koplik]

And I think it. Listen, I. We don't get to see how Amanda raised her kids, and we don't really. Really don't hear about their childhoods outside of what Laura was like in school. I would imagine that Amanda raised the kids she wanted and not the kids she had. And that. Which is absolutely what led to Laura getting to where she's at now. Laura's not someone where, like, if you push her and you push her, she comes out of her shell. Like, there's. There's this nurturing and a support that needs to happen that she clearly never got. Not due to lack of care, lack of understanding of that's what she needed. And so now she's retreated so far into herself that it's nothing short of a miracle will get her out of there. And an almost miracle does kind of happen with the Gentleman Caller. And it's something I really like about that scene which we will get to Tom. It's interesting seeing past castings of Tom because. Especially because the homosexuality of it all and what the whole going to the movies thing means, that is clearly not addressed in many productions, probably up until the 21st century. I would argue one of the big things with Zachary Quinto in the John Tiffany production that was referenced a lot in reviews was like, finally we can talk about how Tom be gay. Cause like Christian Slater, John Malkovich in the Joanne Woodward movie. Sam Waterston with Katharine Hepburn and I never know how to say his actual name, but it's like Zachary Zelko, Ivanek, something like that.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Oh, yes, it might be Jelko Ivaneck.

[Matt Koplik]

With Clipwisk, plus the Flockhart and Julie Harris and John Heard with. I believe that was with Tandy. Just not like super macho, but nothing about the light fantastic in them and no touch of the Williams. And also he's literally named Tom.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

He hasn't even hit it. This is me, he seems to say.

[Matt Koplik]

And yet we get. And then also always cast older.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, that I don't mind so much because you can, you can the memory of it all exactly like that. I don't. I don't mind that because also if it is a memory play, then him being the same age, it's kind of like reminds me of Fun Home where it's like actually Alicent should be the same age as Helen and Bruce because she's. I'm the one who's 43 and stuff. Like she's the same age as her father when he died. So there is something interesting about Amanda and Tom, the actors actually being contemporaries potentially. But it's not usually cast that way. But I. I'm interested.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, well, it gets cast a whole bunch of different ways because originally it was a bit older. I believe the original actor who played Tom was 40 till Laurette Taylor's 60. And in the last revival, Joe Mantello and Sally Field are not that far apart in age.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Right, right, right, right.

[Matt Koplik]

And that was, that was something that I think a lot of people who took the John Tiffany revival as gospel had issues with. Like Mantello's too old for this. We had Zachary Cuinto. I'm like, Zachary Cointo is not the ideal of Tom. But that was something that was really big. Was. Oh, we're really leaning into him being G A Y. And I think that there's. For me, I, I like the ambivalence of it all. Of obviously there's clearly the understanding of the homosexuality, but it's not overt. It's always referred to as his own peculiarity and his ways of escaping his home life. And Tom's arc in a lot of ways for me is it's kind of. Maybe it's because I have it on the brain because we just released the episodes, but it's like a little bit of the hedwig and the angry inch of. He does get a happy ending. He is free, but in order to be free, he has to leave a part of himself behind. Cause Amanda and Laura are ultimately tragic characters. They. Amanda's fighting for her and her children's life to have a better life. That clearly isn't going to happen for her. Laura, who had a glimmer of hope and then retreats back into herself. And Tom, who cuts himself off from both to get freedom and gets it. But at the loss of. But at the. Sorry. At the sacrifice of. At the expense of his sister's life and his mom's life and his connection to that.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. It's what that last monologue is so moving about.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's also just like, I love Williams. I have read so much Williams. I have so much of it memorized and still sitting down to reread something, you're just like, oh, the prose. The poetry in the prose that he writes is so incredible. And I feel like that last monologue of Tom's is just some of his best. It's so distilled. It's not a long speech, and yet it feels like it takes you. Yeah, I didn't go to the moon, but it takes you to the moon and back. You know, it is gorgeous and devastating, and it's like, exactly like, if you had to be. Like, what typifies. Like, the way Williams can make you feel. And yes, like, so much of Williams is hilarious, but like that. I think I would probably submit that monologue that. Or, you know, maybe one of Blanche's, but I just think it's just, like, so perfect. It's his voice. Exactly. And it is also just gorgeous, but not for the sake of being beautiful poetry. It's poetry to speak to something that is so massive that, like, that is.

[Matt Koplik]

Is.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Is like, ugh. Anyway, I'm. I'm explaining it with gorgeous poetry myself now.

[Matt Koplik]

I remember I had said once, I think it was. It must have been in the Streetcar episode. I had described William's language as a sweaty rose that's been set in a glass of bourbon. It's this beauty that is also feral and touched with a pang of. Of poison. There's it. Which makes it so dramatic and compelling. When it's at its most indulgent, it is pure, flowery rose. And when it is, maybe it's sloppiest, it's pure bourbon. But those are not and he has them. But it's not the majority of his writing. The majority of his writing, I think, is that nice balance. And Glass Menagerie, I would say, might be the only play where you don't get the bourbon, but it is still drunk.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Half the play drunk or hungover.

[Matt Koplik]

I don't mean that in terms of the alcoholism. I mean, like, I don't get the poison dripping off of it. Other than maybe when he says. I think to myself how lucky dead people are.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But that's so funny.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, it's such a great line. But his. When he's talking about. So when he talks about the movies twice. Because he sort of has this fight with Amanda where she's saying, why do you always go there? And when he's sort of talking about it, it reminded me of Joe Pitt talking to his mother about, you know, I come here to watch. And it has. Without it being so overt. It's that tinge of there is other stuff going on besides the movies or things that could happen that he's sort of skating around but doesn't maybe ultimately do. And then when he's talking to J. Jim about the movies, he has. I feel like it's a realization he's having of. He goes to escape. He sees. He goes to see people go on adventures. And he realizes that by doing so, people are holding themselves back from having their own adventures because they're wasting time watching movie stars have fake adventures. And that is sort of maybe the mental breakthrough he needs to realize he's got a stop and go do something at some point. If he wants to actually live a life, not just necessarily be a poet, but just live. Cause he's not living. He's waking up every day to support his mother and sister. And that's it.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

So this is fun fact, as I mentioned before, the shoe factory where Williams worked in St. Louis, the international Shoe Factory, Continental Shoemakers. It is in the play. The building, which still has international, like written down the side of it, is now the site of city museum in St. Louis, which is this incredible. Basically all of these artists took a bunch of urban detritus, like, you know, just cast off stuff and built this dreamscape art jungle gym inside. Basically, look it up. It is incredible. The closest thing I can liken it to is kind of like Meow Wolf. And it's is unbelievable. Like there's. There's all these different, like kind of little ecosystems you can go to. So one is called the Caves. And it's all this just like mosaic that have been built into. You can crawl through all these caves. There's children running everywhere. I'm like, I would absolutely have gotten myself literally stuck in some of these places as a child. There's a slide from the top of the. From the roof of the building. You can take a slide like a. However many stories down, like a 10 story slide if you want. Like, it is this joyous, wild, weir place. And I love knowing that this place that, that like Williams immortalized in this play as just this symbol of drudgery and like, yeah, a dead end for him has become this like, creative place of play. And like wild creative. Like you should just really look up some images of what it looks like inside because it truly is just like this weird little wonderland. It's unlike any other place I've been. And there's very little traces of it being a shoe factory. There's like one little, like, place with some like, pictures and stuff where you can see like what it looked like when it was a shoe factory. And then. Cause Brian Nash and I were in St. Louis to do my show the Brass Menagerie, which is a bunch of Williams plays. I play nine different Williams characters and rewrite lyrics to a bunch of classic musical theater tunes and in a parody style, make them fit the characters. And I do the basic. I play all three wingfields and I do like all of them of Glass Menagerie to the score of Gypsy.

[Matt Koplik]

But I was coming up blue roses.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes. Yeah, everything's coming up roses. They're gonna be blue. So I got us there. You know, everything that's there, like tchotchkes that you can buy are all like, to do a city museum. And I found one little stand that had like ornaments that were just like a shoe heel type thing. So I got one for Brian and I that had city museum stamped on it. I was like, yes, this is what I wanted. Evidence that Tennessee was here. But I don't know, I think that that's kind of. Kind of a beautiful. A beautiful little fun thing. But yeah, like, there's like one floor where they've left a lot of the architecture pretty much alone. But they've like. They've got like these little like skating rink type things in there. But you can see the structure of the building. I was like, yeah, it's all like right angles. It's so industrial. It's like not a creative, like, for a creative person like him. It's like I could see how you're like dying a very fast death of the soul here for someone who's like bursting to be anywhere and do anything. And it's like, no, you're here putting, you know, leather together. Putting, you know, shoe boxes together.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, it's. And then there's so many stories of great creatives or great minds working menial jobs for long years of their lives until something happens that either a great twist of fortune of their own determination breaks them out. But it makes you think of all the people who have to just sort of survive or support other people who could give us, give the world so much, but can't due to circumstances. I know this is the play that put Williams on the map. This wasn't his first play, though. Cause this was adapted from a short story that he had written. He was writing short stories and he turned this one into a play based on Portrait of a Girl in Glass.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah. Yeah. I'll be honest, this is an area where I'm like, I don't really know all the production history of all those. But no, it definitely. It was the first thing that hit.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

For him.

[Matt Koplik]

The story goes that this had its premiere in Chicago and it was struggling until the critics came and said, this is gonna be big. And it blew up there and then came to Broadway, where it opened at the Playhouse Theater. Have you watched the documentary the Golden Age?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I mean, a million years ago. Okay, so. Yes, but not recently.

[Matt Koplik]

Sure. Fantastic. This is where I come in. So the Golden Age. I've spoken about it a few times on the podcast over the years. I want to talk about again, it's. I want to say it's 90 minutes, maybe it's an hour and 45 by Rick McKay, who sadly passed. And it is interviews with actors, writers, directors who. Yeah, everybody who were on the boards between, like, 1938 and 1966. And a lot of amazing people in it. Angela Lansbury, Sondheim, Hal Prince, Ann Miller, Carol Burnett, BEA Arthur, Shirley MacLaine, Uta Hagen, Annette Febray, Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon. And there's a moment where McKay does a section on the Glass Menagerie, specifically Laurette Taylor, the original Amanda Wingfield in the Glass Menagerie. Now, a lot of you listeners may not know the name Laurette Taylor. I did not know the name Laurette Taylor before I saw this documentary. Rick McKay did not know who Laurette Taylor was before making this documentary. And it comes up because he'd asked each of them what was the best performance they had seen in their. During this time of the Golden Age. And we're talking this. These interviews are 40 to 60 years after the fact. And he was saying, I was expecting to hear Ethel Merman in Gypsy. I was expecting to hear, I don't know, Brando in Streetcar or Paul Newman in Sweet Bird of Youth. And he was surprised how many said Laurette Taylor and the Glass Menagerie. And we're literally talking Seldies Hagen, Nanette Fabre, Gina Rowlands, Martin Landau, Ben Gazara, like some of the greats that we know of, all, one by one saying her in that show, saw it 10 times, saw it 20 times, and the way they could describe it. Two things about that. One is, I bring. That's. This is always my example when we talk today about this was transcendent, this was marvelous. This is history making. This is going to be around forever. And within two seasons, we're not talking about it anymore. Which is not to say that things aren't good. Things can be good and we've had great things. But to have all of those greats one by one separate from each other because this documentary was made over, like, four years, all of them separately saying, it's 50 years later, that's still the best thing I've ever seen. Without talking to each other about it. It's just all of them, I go, that is a mark of something that truly hit and what made an impact.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

On all of those people, not just.

[Matt Koplik]

That play, but her specifically her performance, transforming a generation of actors and showing them what it can be, and all of them trying to reach that. That is why when I have people DM me and go, this performance is going to be remembered forever. I'm like, we're not talking about it six months later. Or if we are, it's not with the fervor of that. And granted, you know, it's easier to be passionate about something when it's right in front of you. But. But 50 years from now, are we going to have that generation of great performers talk about the performance from the last five seasons? I don't think so. And we've had some great ones like that is. That is true magnificence. And Marian Seldes talks about how the words she says were, I had heard the reviews from Chicago. You couldn't not have heard what the reviews were in Chicago. And so when it came to New York, she saw it because it was sort of, you know, let's see what you had.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

If you wanted to be part of the conversation.

[Matt Koplik]

You want to be the conversation. Yeah. And she goes, and. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. The only Person who was brave enough to say k. Ballard or says, I saw her in the Glass Menagerie. And I remember thinking, ah, she's not so special. She's like. Like anybody on the street. She goes. It was pretty soon afterwards I realized how hard it was. That's why that's so special.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, especially. Especially with a role like Amanda, which is. Requires such dexterity with text. You have to be so funny, kind of savage at times, and also, like, tragic. Like you ha. Like to be able to do all of that and appear like you just walked off the street. How, how, how, how. How do you do that? Like, that's incredibly. It's easier to do that, to be, quote, unquote, cinematic, like when a camera's right in your face or when you're, like, doing something that's much more naturalistic language. But to do Williams, to have Williams in your mouth and have it seem like this is someone who just walked in off the street feels like. I understand why people are still talking about that, because there are those performances where you can't catch someone acting. And look, I love big acting. Like it happened to the school of Liza Minnelli, you know, like, that's. That's what I like to do. But it does feel like. Because I feel like I've seen them once, maybe twice, where I've seen someone and truly been like, how. Where'd they get her? She can't be an actor. I'm thinking of Claire Price and Vincent and Brixton, which I saw in London. And she. They brought it over here and she got a Tony nomination for it. But that's one of the only times I've been like, wow, I really feel like she just walked in off the street.

[Matt Koplik]

It's. It is really, really hard, especially in theater, where you have to make it project to the last row.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

You gotta reach the balcony, darling.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes, exactly. And as you said with Williams, it is so theatrical and poetic. And I do think over the decade, we have gotten further away from realism with him because of the floweriness of his dialogue. And again, while we're doing Menagerie, quite a lot people want Streetcar, they want Cat, they want Sweet Bird of Youth with these larger than life characters. And people aren't. People are embracing the larger and not the life. And that is.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I feel like Glass Menagerie, just not to be pedantic here, but I feel like Menagerie is getting produced a lot more than Sweet Bird of Youth now.

[Matt Koplik]

It is, yes.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But what.

[Matt Koplik]

I mean, I think actors are wanting.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Want a big showcase. Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

1,000%. Streetcar and Cat, I think, are overall more produced on a larger scale. Managerie had quite a lot. And what's interesting about Laurette Taylor and I bring this up because I mentioned there was. And we can talk about this as we talk about the Tiffany revival, which we both saw. And I think a lot of the listeners have that as like a guiding star of Menagerie these days, I'm reading all of the reviews from Broadway productions post Laurette Taylor, as well as reading the reviews from when the original opened. Because the. The narrative is it opens in Chicago and everyone loses their mind. It opens in New York and the reviews are positive, but not to the extent they were in Chicago. Part of that might have been the hype, but another part of it was it being the first mainstream Williams play. All the critics basically say this playwright is special and is going to give us some good shit down the road. This play is really lovely. It's got some bumps, but what they all say is, Ms. Laurette Taylor is giving the greatest acting performance I have ever seen. Flash forward 20 years. We get Streetcar, we get Cat, we get Summer and Smoke, and we get our first major revival, I believe, with Maureen Stapleton, who's an amazing.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Didn't she do two. She did two revivals of it.

[Matt Koplik]

One in the 60s and one in the 70s.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

You love a role that can age with you.

[Matt Koplik]

We. We sure do, baby. I think the first time she did it, Piper Laurie was Laura. Wow.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Wow.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

That's good casting, baby. Piper Laurie.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. Who. Who did it the second. Who did she do it the second time? But because it's every production, there's always an amazing. Actresses. Amanda and then Laura or a Tom are also like, incredible. So, yeah, Maureen said Piper Laurie was Laura. George Grizzard was Tom, Pat Hingle was Jim o'. Connor. Second time it was against Stapleton. Rip Torn was Tom. Jesus.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Rip Torn.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. This is just again, embarrassment of riches. Tandy does it in the 80s with Amanda Plummer as Laura, Bruce Davison as Tom, John Hurd as Jim. We get 94. Julie Harris is Amanda, Calista Flockhart is Laura. Kevin Kilner is Jim o'. Connor. Who? I was like, oh, who is that? That name sounds familiar. He goes on to play like a million hot dads. In the early 2000s. He was one of my dad daddy crushes. And I was like, oh, yes, of course. 05. We have Jessica Lange as Amanda, Sarah Paulson as Laura, Christian Slater as Tom, Josh Lucas is Jim. Brenda Blethen does it in Brenda, actually.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

That is. I would love to see that. That's what I'm saying. Oh, absolutely.

[Matt Koplik]

Amy Adams does it in London to. Not to exactly critical acclaim, but she does do it.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But she tried it, darling. She drank.

[Matt Koplik]

Three cheers for trying. I'm always down for that. But all of these reviews, she's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

She's willing to put herself out there. Amy Adams, I really. I respect her enormously.

[Matt Koplik]

As I said, these reviews, you look at the 60s, 70s, 80s. Like, each decade menagerie comes back. There's. You look at the Times reviews, and there's always a little bit of. I'm so happy this play is back. And there's something about this production that makes it worth seeing, but something is missing. And they always tie it back to Laurette Taylor and sort of how she was the glue that made that show pop. And the show itself is good. It doesn't need, like, it's not like, oh, if your Amanda is off. Like, the whole thing doesn't work like the play.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's hard to live in the shadow of one of the greatest acting performances of all time. I do think we're at a point now where that's no longer in people's living memory. It's more, you know, Which I think is why Cherry Jones can come in and do. You know, and have. You know. Because you don't have people in as many people who actually saw it.

[Matt Koplik]

Except. Except that New Yorker article.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Oh, no. Which I did read. Yes, exactly. But at the same time, you're not. Most people are coming to it without, like, even knowing, like, oh, well, this is famous for having had one of the. You know what I mean? As opposed to, like, all of us who grew up watching the into the woods capture. Yeah, it's. It's a. It's such a solid show and yet remarkably difficult to live up to that, you know, like. Cause it was an. It's like they got it really right and we all saw it, you know, it's.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, it's permanently there. And the into the woods one is hard because that's the original company towards the end of the run, when they all had hundreds of performances in their bones and they knew exactly where everything was. Yep. They're so in sync with each other. It's. But. But yes, I hear you, and I think that's absolutely true. The interesting thing about the New Yorker article, and I'm glad it exists, because it is ultimately a counter to all of the raves that production got, which you don't have to agree with. But it is something to consider from someone who has spent decades with the show and saw the original and talks about what made Laurette Taylor so effective and memorable all these decades later for this person and comparing it to Cherry Jones unfavorably with Cherry Jones, by the way, saying that what. What we were saying earlier, which is that Lorette Taylor played a woman, just a woman, and all of the performative elements of Amanda came from a genuine, honest, natural perspective. And that this person from the New Yorker felt that Cherry Jones got too swept up into the idea of Amanda as a Williams leading lady. The Blanche dubois of it all. Not even. Not sorry. The Blanche Devereaux of it all, actually.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, one of the things I thought personally, to me specifically, that I thought was so interesting about that article was that they said it was as though Cherry Jones was auditioning for Mama Rose and Gypsy, which is, of course, how I even conceived of writing the Brass Menagerie. My partner and I were sitting on the couch and again, like, as in a two actor household, you're talking about all sorts of things. And we were so we were talking about Ethel Merman because someone's got to. And we were like, oh, what if Ethel had played Amanda? We were. Then we were just like, joking about what that would be like. And my partner's like, yeah, you could call it the Brass Menagerie. And then we were like, hang on a second. And I started making a playlist. And it is amazing how well it tracks when you have this, like, mother figure who's ferociously trying to better her life and the lives of her children now, obviously, like, they go off in. In different ways. I was thinking about this actually the other day. I was like, well, who would we say is like a more destructive parent? I think in the context of the plays themselves, I would say probably Mama Rose. But if we are to extrapolate from Williams's real life that Amanda Wingfield is going to go on to like, or is it could possibly have her daughter lobotomized. I'm like, well, I don't know. That makes a strong case for being a man. But if we're just taking the text at face value, I was like, probably Mama Rose. But I thought that was so interesting because to me, because I've written this piece where they are interspersed, they are very distinct women, but the stories really, there's a lot of overlap. So for me, they're very linked. And I was like, oh, yeah, well, that's why I probably can't ever play Amanda. Because I absolutely would play Mama Rose because I'm a freight train of a performer.

[Matt Koplik]

I mean, if we're going off of real world stuff too, like after the fact, the real life Mama Rose also killed somebody. So just. Just saying, you know, it's a real.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Listeners write in who's more destructive. Real life Mama Rose. Real life Edwina Williams.

[Matt Koplik]

You know, I will argue, I think Amanda, in the context of both plays, if we're just going off of what we see.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah. Just.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes. I think Amanda is obviously, for me, the better parent. Just because we get examples of Amanda listening to her. She doesn't always hear them, but listens.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

They have that brief. That brief thing when Tom and Amanda aren't speaking to one another, which is also hilarious. But then when they decide they'll speak to one another, like they actually have a conversation for about five lines and then it immediately folds back into the patterns. That's just like, oh, isn't that so. So real. And, and, and. But we are allowed the glimpse of. Of the person really listening and really trying to understand her son before they fall back into their sniping their patterns.

[Matt Koplik]

And. Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I don't know that Rose ever listens to a thing Louise says. Really? Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

I mean, who would. What does Louise have to say?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

You've really got. And here we have Louise and Laura. You know, in the Brass Menagerie, where I change a lot of lyrics, I just have Laura sing Little Lamb as is to her glasses Menagerie. Like, it's amazing again how much somebody's like, you don't really have to change that much. There's a lot. It's a lot of overlap there, really. I beg to differ with you.

[Matt Koplik]

How do you mean? You're the top.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah. You're an arrow collar.

[Matt Koplik]

You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred. Well, send in the twinks, because I think we now have ourselves another smooth transition. We need to talk about Laura now because we eventually need to talk about her scene with Jim, AKA the Gentleman Caller, which is, I think, one of the best scenes in theater for all the talk of Laurette Taylor and Amanda and all that stuff, which is fantastic. The Laura Jim scene is one of my favorite things ever written. But so Laura. Laura is a. First of all, Lara is the name of my sister, but also Laura. Laura as a character. She's a tricky character to play. She just is. There are so many traps you could fall into. What are some traps? You have found actresses Fall into when they attempt Laura.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, all right, here's one of the things with Laura. So, okay, I grew up incredibly shy, and I don't present as shy anymore because as an actor, that can be difficult. You know, I worked hard on just, like, muscling through it. So now it costs me a lot less to be gregarious. You know what I mean? I would say of all the Williams heroines, Alma is the one that I have, like, the Alma from Summer and Smoke. I feel like I understand her so deeply. I love her so much. And there's a lot of Alma, who is also someone who is very socially unsuccessful, incredibly anxious, but she is more capable than Laura. She kind of had to be given, like, what her family story is. But I feel like we see kind of a different riff on his sister in Alma than we do in Laura. But Laura, like, because it is hard to play shy, you can't, but you have to. You have to play the behavior, right? And I think, like, for a lot of younger actresses, because it's. I mean, Laura, I think, is actually 24, if we do the math, 24 or 26, early to mid-20s. She's not 18, you know, but she's often played by someone who looks very young and who often is a younger actor. Then you have. You have more experienced actors playing the other parts. So you also want someone who can hold their own as an actor in. Be a good scene partner and a good sparring partner to your Amanda. That is difficult, you know, so you're often going to have an actor who maybe has a lot less status in the room and therefore can't fight for the character in the same way. And, like, I just think there's a lot of tricky stuff with how that's going to get done in a rehearsal room. That means that maybe that actor is going to be too intimidated to, like, you know, fight for building it in the way that it needs to be built. But I think a lot of it comes down to people trying to play shy rather than leaning into the behaviors that, like, calm her and give her joy and. And her own sense of purpose, you know, so she can sometimes get lost among bigger personalities on the stage, is what I'll say.

[Matt Koplik]

So, and so the menagerie, then her collection of glass animals, is that sort of a safe space for her of just calming and soothing, or sort of like a world where everything can make sense to her, or is that an escape?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, I think it's all of those things. The Victrola, she always goes back to The Victrola and the Glass Menagerie. And I think a lot of it is she clearly has a very rich fantasy life, you know, as a lot of shy people do. You know, she has these objects that she takes great care of. It's something that's manageable for her, but that I think also, like. Yeah. You know, you hear talking about the unicorn, like, sitting there on the shelf with the other horses. They don't seem to mind. Like, they are all have personalities. They're all alive to her. And I think, yeah, it's safer to have a relationship with an inanimate object than it is to. To face your high school crush, you know, and like, talk to him ever, you know? But I think that there's some interpretive things there that I feel like can be up to whichever actor, but I think there's elements of all those things that you said. Absolutely. And escape and. Yeah. A place where she can make sense of something because she's in control of it.

[Matt Koplik]

I feel like I am also someone who as a child was incredibly shy. I did have to work at that. I am also. I can still be bad at it sometimes. I've been in group gatherings where I don't really know anyone. And I. I tell myself in my head, you are playing someone today who has no problem introducing them to three people right now. And I do that. It takes a lot of energy. I. I come home and I sit on my bed and I cry. Not because I'm sad, but because I'm just so drained and it's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

You're overwhelmed.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes, exactly.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I really get it. Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. There's. There's a. There's a famous photo in our family of me and my mom. I'm about five or six. And I, I. It's me. It's just me and my mom. She's like, crouched down and we're smiling, really happy. We're at my friend Sophie's birthday party. And what makes this photo so famous is it's such a sweet photo. We look so cute together. It's like straight out of a Gap ad. It looks like a super happy memory. It's not a happy memory. My mom wasn't supposed to be at that birthday party. She was supposed to just drop me off and go. And what happened was she brought me in and like, I had known Sophie for three years at that point half of my life, she basically was like another sister to me. I knew half the kids at that party, but something in me just trick triggered and I started sobbing. And I wouldn't let her leave. And I'm like, the only reason why she stayed was because there was clearly such a ferocity in my voice of like, do not leave me, do not leave me. And she was so angry at me that whole day for making. She was like, I had think I had to call people, I had things I had to cancel. But in those 20 seconds they took a photo of us and were like, we're happy. And then the rest of the day my mom was like, I was furious with you.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But no, my, my mom said when I was, I was a kid like five, six. She's like, I. I was so worried about you because you'd go to birthday parties where you knew every single other child in attendance. You were friends with all these people, but you would like sit off to the side wringing your hands.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Like so it's just like a little five year old like sitting at a birthday party. Everyone else is playing and I'm sitting there like I remember vividly like helping my friend's parents pick up the wrapping paper after everyone else ran off. And I was like, I'll be of assistance. And you know, it's like that. So I play Amanda type characters, but I relate much harder to the Lauras of the world, you know, which I mean of course, like we all have the part of us that like feels like an outcast and everything. But I'm like, no, no, no. I relate to being like, what if I just didn't go anywhere, do anything?

[Matt Koplik]

Well, it's the, the Laura mentality and it's what I. It's not that Laura likes being shy. It's not that she likes being fragile. I think you want to see that fight in her ultimately. The being unable to answer the door, all this stuff, it is so terrifying to her. You need to see almost the animal instinct of fight or flight. And she is always in flight mode. And when Amanda is keeping her from flying, the like, you don't understand. Freddy Krueger is about to come through that door and tear me a new butthole. Not physically, but emotionally. It's her instinct is always, no one wants me here. Everyone would be happier if I wasn't here. Can I just go into the other room and pretend I don't expect exist?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Maybe not even that. It's like I don't even know that. I mean, like Jim says she has a, you know, self confidence problem, but. Or how does he phrase it? It'll come to me. But it's. I think it's also because there's there's fight and flight, and then there's also flock and freeze. And I think freeze is also a big one for just being like, I can't function. Like, the system gets scrambled. There's so much going on. I'm so overwhelmed by the thought of even having to, like, look at this person or be witnessed by this person, be in the room with a stranger, like, and. And a lot of shy people, like, are not shy around their family, but she also has a mother who is a. A charming bulldozer, you know. And so, like, you also just get used to what's. What's. Stella has that line to Blanche was like, I just got used to not talking that much around you, honey. Like, something like that.

[Matt Koplik]

Just like.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, I'm. It's not that I have to be quiet, but it's around you. Where's there room to say anything? But. But then you see. Come in and you see how Laura is outside the house, which is to say everything and everyone is overstimulating. It's like she has no skin on her body and it's just all nerve, you know?

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. I was looking at possible foster or adoption dogs this morning, and there are. There are quite a few that talk about how once you be of certain dogs, you know, two, three years old, and they say, how are they with people? And they go, you know, with you, the owner, if once you've established that, you know, you're good, whatever, like, they are the biggest love bugs. They're comfortable with you. They do have a hard time with new people. It's not that they're aggressive, they don't bite, but they're like, you will see a shift in their attitude until they know that this person isn't scary anymore. And you don't know how long that's going to take. And there is something about that with Laura as well. Of every person outside of her immediate family. And part of the reason why the immediate family isn't this is just because she's grown up with them. And. And there is a comfort of. Comfort of just knowing Tom and Amanda so well. And even with them, it's not like she becomes the life of the party. She becomes funny all of a sudden. But she can explain what she means. She doesn't. Laura does not crack jokes with her family, but she's. She feels comfortable enough to tell Amanda the truth about where she goes.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

And she's very close with Tom, you know, and that's. That's evident.

[Matt Koplik]

She. She is not so unpecular that she's Unable to communicate with people. But there is an ease that she has to eventually get into. And she will never get to a place in ease where. Where she becomes gregarious, but she can become less terrified. And that's what I love about the scene with Jim. Because before Jim arrives, we learn in Act 1 that. Because Amanda's like, haven't you ever felt something for a dude, Laura? Like, anything going on below the waist? Baby, please tell me. And Laura says, yes. In high school, there was a boy, Jim o'. Connell. That's his name. Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

O'. Connor.

[Matt Koplik]

O'. Connor. Sorry, sorry. I'm hearing the Southern accent. So he had Jim o'. Connell. So in my mind, it's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Okay. What's that final syllable we're going to swallow?

[Matt Koplik]

It's Jean Smart. On. On big mouth. Oh. As the depression kitty. She's like.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Mary, a plosive to be found.

[Matt Koplik]

But she tells Amanda about how he was the lead in Pirates of Penzance, and he sat next to her in. In three different classes. He called her.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

No, in chorus. In chorus. Thrice weekly.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, thrice weekly. But also they. I think they had assembly, and they were opposite each other in assembly. It's something like that as well. They were. They were around each other enough that he eventually rem. But he called her Blue Roses because she was out of school for a while with pleurosis. He misheard her and just started calling her Blue Roses, which is a fun joke, but also, I think Blue Roses is just like this beautiful little magical nickname.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes, it is. That. That, like, crystallizes the Williams touch, doesn't it? Like, I'm gonna take something very pedestrian and unpleasant and elevate it into a beautiful, poetic image.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. I'm gonna lift it up into the air and light it on fire, and it's gonna be stunning. But it's also just a funny punchline in a show where there aren't a lot of laughs. It is.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I think it's a very funny play. But, you know, I have yet to.

[Matt Koplik]

See a version that is funny.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

So I want. On the page. It is very funny. Those monologues on the phone where she's trying to sell the thing and she's talking about, you know, like, what was. It's the next installment of the story by Bessie Mae Hooper. You remember the last one she did like, Honeymoon for Three. Now, that was unusual, wasn't it? Like, just so. I think Amanda is unintentionally hilarious, and Tom is intentionally very acidly funny.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes. The scene with the gentleman collared Gym. Once, you know, they have dinner, the power goes out because Tom has not paid the electricity bill because he put it towards his admission for. Why is it the.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

For the merchant Marines.

[Matt Koplik]

For the merchant marines, yes. So the lights go out and they have to live by candelate for a while. And Jim goes into the living room and has a scene with Laura with, you know, little candelabra. It's very pretty. The scene is. I feel like the, the moment where you see that Laura could have a chance in this world if someone who recognized what she needs, both what, where she's at and what she needs were there for her a little more consistently. And I've. I've watched men play Jim a number of ways and I liked Brian J. Smith's version where he is a very earnest, sweet guy. I've also seen guys who kind of put on the charm and put on the suave elements, not because they're trying to seduce Laura, but because.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But that's just who they are.

[Matt Koplik]

Exactly. That version of Jim Carrey, he was.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

The king of his high school.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, but that's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

He was. He peaked in high school and there's like that is. That can be a particular kind of guy in his mid to late 20s. The guy who peaked in high school when he thought this was just the start. That's a. It's going to be a particular kind of behavior.

[Matt Koplik]

There's. But I also think that the way Williams writes him, I feel like there, I mean, obviously there's room for both. I feel like there's a world in which Jim is very self aware about how his life hasn't gone according to plan and not in a sad, sad kind of way and not in a showboaty kind of way.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's.

[Matt Koplik]

He's very aware. High school was awesome. He did great. And as far as he is aware, high school was awesome for everyone. And he's kind of genuinely shocked to hear from Laura how much racket she thought she caused by walking up in a leg brace. And he's like, I didn't really remember.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I don't think that. I don't think though that that's because he thought high school was awesome for everyone. I think he maybe was number one, a little self absorbed and number two, just like it probably was much bigger in her head than it was to everyone else. But there's also a certain degree of like politeness that I think you could play around with depending on the actor that you, if you have a wheelchair user as Laura, you know, talking about like how noticeable she thought all this was. Like there's a certain amount that you could play that off as like he's just being very polite or just totally clueless to other people, you know, because.

[Matt Koplik]

But he does talk about how everyone's got their own stuff and, and he acknowledges that everyone's kind of self absorbed in their own way.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

And, and he's like, I didn't really notice and I don't, he says I don't really think anyone did because we're all, all focused on us. And so that's, that's the self awareness. I mean because he does have, he does have that ego that's definitely been beaten down a bit by the years, not adding up to how it should have gone. But he's aware of that. He's aware that high school was awesome for him. It hasn't gone how he wanted. He's aware that he is, he can, he can be self centered but he also thinks that he's, he has ambition to better himself and, and do right by himself and, and maybe that does come from a seed in his brain of going no, I was the golden. And it sucks that I'm not that I haven't lived up to that. I have to find a way to live up to that now. But whatever it takes to motivate you to do, to better your circumstances. And he tries to pay it forward with her. He tries to give her self confidence whether it's pure or not. Who's to say? Brian J. Smith definitely played it from a pure perspective of recognizing this hurt soul in front of him and just trying to extend a courtesy. And when Muddy's the water is the kids kiss at the end. And I'm not sure what is the most. William's intended way to play that kiss. I, I don't know if it's confusion, I don't know if it's. He can't help himself. I don't know.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, I, I mean what's great is it's all, it's not so explicitly spelled out right like that. And real people necessarily behave in a convenient dramatic structure. You know, Larry Moss says this a lot about Jim and this scene and I think it might be because this is part of what in Stella Adler's lectures on Williams, that he is an emissary from the present day, whereas the Wingfield family, because they're all stuck in the past because of Amanda, you know, and like, because like Amanda's still trying to, to like make the old ways work. Do you know what I mean? Like they're, they're still, like, they're still rep. They are still representing the. The fallen south. And he comes in and he is the future. He's in taking a course in radio and in public speaking. He's like so mid century in a way that they still feel like when, when she brings up the candelabra, she's like, we'll have to go back to the 19th century for the evening, you know, like that it's like, yeah, they're still stuck in the 1800s. And hey, did you hear it's the 1930s. That he is very much like basically might as well be from another planet. Which I think is part of the reason the scene works so well. Because the contrast between the two characters, both in their attitudes and in their stations in life. But also Laura's playing the Victrola worn out records from their father. Everything is about the past. And, and he comes in and he's like, I got chewing gum, I'm gonna sit on the floor. Like in Amanda's like gentle. You'd never sit on the floor. Like that's not a dumb thing. What self respecting visit gentleman caller's gonna sit on the floor. And to ask like a woman with like some kind of limb difference or something to have her sit on the floor, it's like there's a thoughtlessness to it, but it's just kinda like we're the young kids these days, you know, that all, everything he brings in is this fresh energy which is both exciting and also there's something off about it in, in so far as like how, how trustworthy is it? You know, like, like the future is coming. I think it's here, you know, and. But there's, there's a, like a. I don't know, there's, there's a lot of layers there that, that I think are there to be investigated and there for the audience to map their own projections onto. But I think that all that is to say like this kiss does also feel like he understands why he's been invited there. At a certain point he's like o, you know, and get swept up in the moment, you know, and also like she, she is of his past. Like there's a stage direction where he's talking about, where Williams is talking about how like Tom. Is it a stage direction or is it actually one of Tom's monologues where they're talking about like how he's like one of the few people that remembered him as he was, you know. Yes. And so then eventually Like. Like Jim warmed up to him and then the other men. Because Jim warmed up to him, like, warmed up to as well.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, that's. I think it's. It's either in the monologue or it's what he says to Amanda that he was not well liked when he showed up at the warehouse at first speech.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I think it's a speech to the audience, but that it's also, like, partially because, like, Tom remembered him as he was. So it is also for him a way to kind of, like, step back into his. His glory days a bit, you know, and then Laura remembers him with such reverence, you know? Yes. I saw you all three times in the Pirates of Penzance.

[Matt Koplik]

All three times. Times. Signs her yearbook because she remembered not being too shy to ask him. Her program. Yeah, I thought it was the yearbook of the program. Okay.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

She brings out the yearbook at one point, but in it is the program, I believe.

[Matt Koplik]

Got it. Got it. Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

So he signs the prior pen.

[Matt Koplik]

That's even. That's even worse. Yes.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes, it is.

[Matt Koplik]

And I mean, he. He does make the sort of wise crack of. He's like, here's my signature. He goes, it's not really worth much these days, but here you go. But. But. And I think part of it is, yeah, it's the. The joy of being revered and feeling good about it, but also, in his mind, doing a kindness to her from something she couldn't bring herself to do in the past. I agree. I was really realizing this. Amanda doesn't. Amanda wants them to move up from where they are, but she doesn't necessarily want them to move forward. Jim.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah. Oh, that's such a great way of distilling that. Yes.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. Jim wants to move forward. And by moving forward, he will thinks he will move up, which he just might, because the only way to move up is to move forward. You know, you can't. You can't do better in your life if you are trying to hold on to the past. If you are. If you are going, I want what I had, and I will keep fighting until I get it. It's like, no, what you had is gone. So you can't get that. But you can be better than where you are right now. But you have have to readapt. And that's ultimately where Laura, in her scene with Jim, you see a glimmer of, like, she could possibly get there. She'll never be able to be the belle of the ball like her mother was, and she'll probably never get to be the wife of Jim, well, she can't cause he's engaged to somebody else. But she can be better off than where she currently is. And Tom is the one who ends up moving by making the hard choice of moving forward and not just trying to move up. That he's able to do better in his circumstances. But you see Laura kind of break out of her shell a little bit with Jim and I appreciate that. This is where actually Williams does show that Jim is both kind hearted and self centered. Laura tells him about the menagerie and she shows him the unicorn and how he's her favorite. And then he gets her to dance like 10 minutes later and they knock against the table and the menagerie falls over and breaks the unicorn and the horn falls off and he says, oh God, I'm so embarrassed. I'll bet that was your favorite one. And it's like, yes it is. She told you 15 minutes ago that was her favorite one. But what I like about it is that she eventually gives him that, that piece as a memento when he leaves with a souvenir. A souvenir with the horn unattached. And in a way, while it is devastating that her favorite thing is now broken, you could play it if you want to give Laura a glimmer of hope that her life isn't going to just be pure tragedy from now on. There is maybe some way in which she has been shifted from this interaction with Jim. She's been given not just a kindness but a boost in exactly the way she needs from the person she should hear it from that allows her to maybe not be quite as caged in by her arrested development as she might have been if this situation had never happened at all.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Now Grant, do you think she's going to be able Amy Toe Jackson?

[Matt Koplik]

I did not say that that's what's going to happen. I said if you have a director who really wants the best for Laura, you could work it in a way where there's a glimmer of hope. I don't think ultimately that is what's going to happen. But if you as a director, like I really want Laura to have some kind of win, you can have the actress put a little shift in her.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I do think the win is that this happened at all.

[Matt Koplik]

Sure.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

You know what I mean? Like for her like that, that this happened even though nothing beyond this happens. She has this like one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot. Do you know what I mean? Like.

[Matt Koplik]

Well, for someone who's never watched that much Sex in the City, she has the memory of the zazazu, and it's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I don't even, I don't even know the words coming out of your mouth. So.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, that's okay, baby. You don't need to. It's one of the worst finales of Sex and the City ever. Yeah, I think there is a, There is a beauty in that, a poetic sadness in that, I'm saying, because the play is good. I. There is a pocket where a director could do that. It won't. It's not like, oh, Laura's gonna go off and go back to typing school. It's not, oh, Laura's gonna go off and get married. But maybe Laura. Maybe that limp is a little less pronounced after today. Maybe Laura has, like, her shoulders pulled back a little bit more. Maybe her voice will go slightly above a whimper. She'll be able to talk now in a stage whisper, as opposed to a, as opposed to Seabiscuit. At the end of the race, she's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Oh, my God.

[Matt Koplik]

I'm just saying. Don't make me laugh, Mama. My asthma, it's just, it's so. Oh, God, I love it. I love it. Yeah. When you watch that scene, what do you, what do you feel? What do think? You.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, it really depends on, because, again, I've seen a lot of different people do it in an acting class, so it's not always people who would necessarily be cast in it. My favorite, and by. I say favorite with deep quotation marks is when there's, like, a really, really pretty, beautiful young woman, thin and very conventionally attractive playing Laura. And not that really beautiful people can't have, like, a lot of, of, like, I, not saying that at all, but, like, let's just say, like, people who have already done well for themselves on tv. It's like not, not being willing to investigate being anything but a shiny little star. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like there are actors who are clearly afraid to have the audience not like them, and so they, they won't lean into, like, playing a villain or whatever. Like, like, I, I, I don't, I don't want to name names, but I'm thinking of, like, three different performances in my head where I'm like, I don't know what that's about, but I think it's partially. You're just not willing to lean hard enough into that without understanding that, like, by leaning hard into it, we will love you. And I feel like with Laura, there's a bit of that, too, of, like, I don't want to dim myself light. It's like, you must. You must for the play to work and not dim your light is not. But you know what I mean? Like, there's people who are, like, so. So invested in the audience, thinking they are attractive or look in a particular way or act in a particular way that they actually, like, don't do the play and therefore are having the inverse effect from what they. They think that they're having, you know, Like. So anyway, I. I would say, like, a lot of it depends on, like, how willing the actors are to just, like, surrender to the material. But, yeah, I mean, I think it's a beautiful. It's a beautiful little duet, you know, and it's played by two very different instruments that, like, come together. Like, it's beautiful. It is wild. It is a moment where her fantasy world becomes reality for a moment, you know? And, like, that is beautiful. And I think it does give hope even. Even if. Then that. That fades and he goes away and we're back. We're back to where we were.

[Matt Koplik]

But there's a sweetness to it that I don't think is always prominent in the play. Cause everyone's fighting so hard to survive up until that moment.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah. To be able to have like, a moment of just, like, beauty. And like, we all remember what it was like to be. I mean, and Laura's obviously, like, in. In her mid-20s, but, like, she's. She's having an interaction that has to do with, like, her young high school self. Right. So, like, we all remember, like, the crush we couldn't ever, like, bring ourselves to talk to or whatever. And, like, the. The fantasies that we would all spin or. Certainly I would of like, well, then maybe years later we'll run into one another. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like, to actually see that, like, lived out. There's something very, like, satisfying about that even as it then concludes in a way that's not, you know, a happy ending quote, unquote. But, like, there is something, like, also very. I think that taps into something. It's very universal. Taps into something that we all know and I think long for. There's a yearning. There's a yearning to this scene that I think is where some of the sweetness comes from. Because we're all seeing it from Laura's perspective. Jim can be as clueless or not as is the actor and director's taste, but we all know where Laura is. And I think that's what makes this scene really work, is our being on Laura's side is us Wanting this for Laura so badly while knowing, like, there's no way. But for a moment, it seems like there could be. And that's. That's just. That's just good writing, you know?

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, very good writing. To tie back to what you're saying about pretty girls playing Laura, because I hear what you're saying, and first of all, when you're talking about a few performances in your mind where the actor was afraid to have the audience not like them, I felt.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

And I'm not specifically talking about Laura's.

[Matt Koplik]

I'm talking in general. No, no, no, no. I. I felt very, very mentally connected with you. I felt telepathically. There were a few performances we were feeling the same way about, like, that's why I was sort of rocking back and forth going, I. I feel you. I feel you, Amy, Joe. But so with it's. I always feel like it's easy to sort of harp on super conventionally attractive people, because in. It's like, well, you're punching up on people who just get everything hands to them because of how they look. And the truth is, is that in this industry, who you are ultimately becomes a commodity, and you have to treat yourself as a product. And that's really hard to do when the whole purpose of your income is to act, to give performances, to ultimately be a minor sociopath and recreate a part of the human experience constantly and make it.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

And trick your body into thinking you're going through this traumatic event eight times.

[Matt Koplik]

A week and make it seem as natural as possible, possible. The thing about Laura. So I. I remember watching an interview with Laura, Ben, Nancy, when she was doing Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. And she said that she hung out with a few model friends of hers to get a better idea because, like, Laura Benanti, beautiful woman. And she has said, I have friends who are the kind of beautiful who, like, their job is to be beautiful. My job is to be an actress. I have friends whose job is to be beautiful. And they have certain mentalities about the world because of that. They go, what do you mean? What do you mean that when you get out of a cab, some man doesn't. Doesn't just open the door for you who you've never met. Laura Benanti's like, that's not how it is for most people. But so because of that, you do eventually have, especially again, as an actor, your brand becomes, well, I'm the. I'm the sweet one. I'm the charming one. I'm the collected one. And if I'm vulnerable. It's. I'm vulnerable in a way that makes you. You want to love me even more. Not in a way that's charming, that's quirky, not in a way that's actually broken in a way that's sad and makes you kind of in pain watching me. And that's also something that makes the part hard to play, because there has to be something about Laura that can be alluring to a man physically. And obviously, that's up to interpretation based off how everybody feels about attraction. But ultimately, you do need 1,200 people in a room to understand what would make Jim stay in the room with her when she's giving him Nothing for about 10 minutes.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

And I think there's a lot of stuff that you can. Again, I think the social construct of what they're. And he's like, I'm supposed to be here. And, like, I get why I'm. Why I'm here. And she's really shy, and I'll just sit here. And I'm like, it's very easy for me to make conversation with people. It doesn't cost Jim much to do that. So I think that there's a bit of that. But, yeah, I think. Look, again, not to. I'm not trying to harp on, like, you know, beauty, privilege, or, like, that's. That's not even what I mean. But there is a. But there definitely is. Like, it's like a. And I haven't watched much 30 Rock, but I. I have seen the episode of where Jon Hamm is Tina Fey's boyfriend who, like, lives in the bubble and doesn't realize that it's not like that forever. And I have a lot of friends who live it. That's what I mean. Where there's, like, a bubble and they don't realize, like, it's just. Just that's not how it is. And so if you. If you are someone who. That is true for it, I think it can be. And there's plenty of really beautiful people who I think would understand Laura very deeply. But I think there's a certain amount of, like, moving through the world with a particular kind of ease that. That some people that I've seen play it. I'm like, I think you don't get what is essential about her, because it's just something that's so foreign to you. There's. There's things that are incredibly foreign to me. I'm like, I don't know how. I have no idea how I would play that. I have no idea how to play xyz, But I'm like, I get that. You know what I mean?

[Matt Koplik]

Bring it back to Laura. For a second. We were talking about, like, the pain and the fear and the overwhelming brokenness of her that is really hard to channel sometimes. And a lot of people will either view that as, oh, I just. I must play the. I can't. I'm so shy. It's.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's a color.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Rather than a fully explored built. So, yeah, I would, but I'm so shy.

[Matt Koplik]

Like, that's just. I think of that all the time when I think of Laura. I'm like, we cannot go to the ball for. I am too shy. Don't be mad at me. Okay? Am so shy. It's just, it's. It's that. And I find so many people with Laura, they play. They're like, I can't, mama. I'm shy.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I have asthma.

[Matt Koplik]

And it's, it's. They're. They're playing the. The, like Instagram version of what that is, rather than the deep rooted fear, the deep rooted pain.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

And it's an easy role, I think, to play a. To use your Instagram metaphor, to extend that a little further, to play a filter of something rather than to actually build something and then build something from the ground up. It's a very outside in approach, the.

[Matt Koplik]

Romanticized version of shy. As opposed to what that actually with the human element of that. And I think ultimately it's why I really, really want to have that date with you. To watch Calista Flockhart do it at roundabout in the 90s.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I'd be fascinated. I would be fascinated.

[Matt Koplik]

Cause it's the performance that launched her career, really being. Because she had done a play called the Loop right before Menagerie, and that's when Mike Nichols saw her and eventually put her in birdcage. But she does Menagerie. It's her Broadway debut. She gets a Theater World Award, goes off to Hollywood and like books.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

This is like Carrie Coon as honey, where you're like, why am I more interested in honey than anybody else?

[Matt Koplik]

Carrie Coon goes off and dubbed it.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I loved Tracy Lutz as George. I will say I love Tracy Letts.

[Matt Koplik]

That was a really wonderful Virginia Woolf. And it was. It was a testament to how good it was that Carrie Coon was able to make such an impression as. As honey. But. Yeah.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

But so good.

[Matt Koplik]

But it's when you have.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's, yeah.

[Matt Koplik]

An actress who's right for the role, who has a good take on it, who's Who. Everything sort of lines up. It sounds to me like Flockart was in a. Was in a decent but not exceptional production that she shone in.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Sure.

[Matt Koplik]

But I do. I am. Because I. In a lot of ways, I'm like, oh, 94. Kalista Flockart is kind of perfect casting.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's great casting. I. I'm very interested in. To see the execution, but, like, from just a. Like, on paper, it's like, yeah, I see why that. I see why that happened, because physically.

[Matt Koplik]

She already has that fragility. But you watch her in Ally McBeal, and you can see the vulnerability she can get to while also having humor and a strength and a fight within her. In Birdcage, she probably has the worst role in the movie, but she has four genuine laugh moments. And I'm like, that's someone who knows what to do.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

And.

[Matt Koplik]

And I. Yeah, I'm just very. I would love to see her do it. In your mind, are there any actors who you would be like, ooh, if they announce this tomorrow, I would go see the fuck out of that.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Uh, Michael Urie. Is Tom done?

[Matt Koplik]

Sorry. Oh, sorry, everybody. That was bad for your misophonia. But, yes, 1,000%.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

That's. That's. That's what I want. That's.

[Matt Koplik]

If I can't play Lawrence also, I will have Michael Urie play Lawrence.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yes, yes. There we go. That's. That's what I want. I think I'm more. Cause I try to think of other people, and I'm like, that's the only one that I'm like, yes. Why haven't we had that? Why have we not been given what we desire, what we deserve? Because.

[Matt Koplik]

Amanda, by the way, do you think.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I mean, here's the thing. How old is Amanda even? Do you know what I mean? It's. It's like a Mama Rose is probably, what, like 38, but she's always played 72, so probably. But they're probably also, like, fairly close in age, I would think the two as well.

[Matt Koplik]

You were saying about Michael before I interrupted you.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Michael's so funny. He's so absolutely hilarious. And he is also just, like, incredible with heightened text. Like, he's playing Richard II right now. And, like, his. Right. I don't know when this comes out, but, like, right now, as we were recording, he's playing Richard II off Broadway. And, like, that has some of the most iconic speeches, like soliloquies and speeches in Shakespeare. And just the way he handles text is, like, with such ease and grace and deftness. You don't even notice. Wow, this is really difficult, tricky language. Cause it's just, it just, he just presents it with such grace and humor and depth. And I feel like he is perfect for Tom. So that's my pitch. You know, if we could go back, I think like a late 80s Cynthia Nixon would be a great look. Laura.

[Matt Koplik]

Oh, my God.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I'd be, I'd be interested in her Amanda now. But I think like that, that in the Calista Flockhart vein of it all, I'm like, I think she would have been a really tremendous Laura.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. I'm trying to think of current women for Laura. I mean, she's, she's both a little young for it and probably technically speaking, the right age, but we do cast a bit older with Menagerie. Did you see John Proctor as the villain? Yes. Finn Estrasa.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

She's great. Honestly, that's, she's, she's doing a, in, in John Proctor, a sort of Laura esque thing. The way that she played that kind of fryness and sha Frazzle shyness and frazzledness is very akin to Laura. She's, she's all friedled. Very akin to Laura. And she, she did it in such a way that like, felt so, like, oh, how are you doing that? Like, how are you doing that? And, and it feels so real. You're right. That's great casting.

[Matt Koplik]

Thank you. So what we're saying is Cynthia Nixon, Michael Urie Finestrasa and the Muppets. As, as the Gentleman Caller. Each night it's a, all of them, all of them, all 20 of them come in all at once to play the Gentleman Caller.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Okay, but if we're used, if we're doing the Muppets, we're doing the Muppets. Obviously. Kermit is Tom.

[Matt Koplik]

Then Piggy is Amanda.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, she has to be. I think she wants to be Elora, but let's be real about things.

[Matt Koplik]

But that's what makes you an Amanda.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

She's a strident pig. She looked great in the costumes.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah. And someone who earnestly says moi is.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

An Amanda is an Amanda, please. And then. Yes. Maybe you have Robin in drag as Laura.

[Matt Koplik]

Or maybe Laura's the one human character. Character.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Maybe that's what we, maybe that's what we have to do. And then. Yeah, who is, who's the Gentleman Caller?

[Matt Koplik]

Gonzo.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I, I, I'm thinking, yeah, it might be, it might need to be Gonzo. Gonzo or Fozzy Bear, probably Foy, actually would be great. He'd be out there cracking jokes. You See him chewing gum, I think.

[Matt Koplik]

I think Fo Bear has that lack of awareness that Jim needs for the beginning of. Just because Jim does walk in, not aware of what the situation is.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Absolutely. He has not been told. To his credit, no one', hey, BT Dubs, this is a sitch.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, well, because Tom doesn't even say, I have a sister. He shows up and he's like, oh, you have a sister? Cool.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I never even. I never pictured you all as having. You as having folks like, well, he.

[Matt Koplik]

Was about to learn and calls him Shakespeare. I also love in For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls, Derang keeps a lot of those references, but remove the reason why, which makes it so and which makes it even funnier. So Tom is called Shakespeare because he's an aspiring writer. And in For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls, we don't have Jim, but we have Ginny Virginia, and she also is speaking loudly because she's taking classes in public speaking. But also the machinery at the warehouse has clearly made her slightly deaf. She can barely hear. And so there's a lot of running jokes about that. And Tom says, oh, Ginny calls me Shakespeare. Why? Well, I told her my name was Tom, but she thought I said Shakespeare. Because. And Lawrence eventually tells Virginia, oh, you know, we used to go to school together. You used to call me Blue Roses. Why? Well, I was out with Spanish Flu, but you thought I said Blue Roses. Like, it's just so stupid.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Durang, man, When Durang hit, it was a bullseye every time. I really encourage the listener. If you haven't read Beyond Therapy recently, oh, do yourself a favor, go back and read it. I wish I could see that original cast. David Hyde Pierce is the waiter in the end, like Diane Wiesley in his debut, Diane Wies.

[Matt Koplik]

I wish. I don't know if there is. There might be video of Elizabeth Franz's sister, Mary Ignatius. If there is video at the library, I demand to see it. I am. I'm showing up there and I'm like, you bring me what you got. I love that.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It's so good. Oh, my God.

[Matt Koplik]

I would. That is a role I would do in drag. Happily, I kind of already do it on this podcast when I take listener questions. I just, in fact, part of. Of my show at Green Room 42, which is. Will be a week from when we're recording this or the Friday after we record this. I should say it'll have already happened by the time this comes out, but I have my little Sally bowl, and listener questions will be in there. Part of that is inspired by Sister Mary Ignatius.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, Sister Mary Matthew explains it all for you.

[Matt Koplik]

Yeah, that's. I couldn't have said it better myself. Any other things about Menagerie we haven't really spoken about? I guess. Well, besides the fact that this launches Williams as a major American playwright, how do we feel this kind of, kind of impacts Broadway? What sort of repercussions from this?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Well, I believe that his stage directions and introduction to it, about it being a memory play, like, really did impact how a lot of people shifted their writing. There's, you know, if you delve into the history of any, like, major playwright or major play, there's stuff that we just take for granted, like Desire under the Elms. I'm also a Eugene o' Neill head. If that hasn't become clear in this, in. In this podcast. Desire under the Elms was, like, revolutionary because it alternated one scene taking place inside the house, one scene, the next scene being an exterior, the next scene being an interior, the next scene being this. And that seems so simple and like such a duh to us now. But no one was doing. He very consciously and intentionally did that because people weren't doing it. And he did that all the. And now we don't think about it. We all just do all these things that, like some of these players that were considered deeply experimental at the time. And I think the form that Williams adopts of this, like, I'm telling you, it's a memory play that explains the fiddle in the wings, like, but also putting it so deeply into the stage directions really was very influential. I would just like to go on record and say, I hate when directors and actors, teachers, and I think they're doing it less. Tell people to, like, strike out the stage directions and not pay attention to them. Because I do. I do understand that a lot of, like, mid century plays have stage directions that have blocking in them that were put in by a stage manager and not the playwright. But a lot of playwrights are telling you so much that is vital in the stage directions and to not even consider them. To read Williams, to read o', Neill, Shaw, and not look at the stage like you're missing so much that's important and that tonally is telling us what the writer is about. And Williams in particular. I think you would be a damn fool to not read these stage directions and extract as much juice as possible.

[Matt Koplik]

It's like learning a song by only reading the lyrics. You have to know what the music sounds like to get an idea of what the tone of the song is.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Or maybe just the melody and not listening to the piano part. Yeah, I will say. I would also like to say a little off that memory play thing. One of my gripes with the John Tiffany production was having seen many shows at the art because I went to college in Boston, so I saw a lot there. That is a theater that is very starkly raked. Not the stage, the audience. Like the first few rows are flat with the stage, but then it starts raking up pretty sharply. So when they have all the reflective pool stuff, everyone could see that. Whereas at the booth, the entire orchestra is on the ground. You're below the stage. You can't see that. You can only see it if you're up. And I think if there's a design element that negates over half of your audience, it's not a good design element. And then also I would just like to go on record again and say, I'll use the words of a friend of mine who I saw this production with. I've lost a lot of things in the couch cushions before, but never my sister. And that's all we'll say about that.

[Matt Koplik]

Yes. That was a moment that a lot of people love. A lot of people don't love. It was, it was a big moment. It was like the big coup de grace of coup de tiatra of this production. So either you really loved it or it wasn't for you.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

I appreciated the swing, but as I said, like, come on.

[Matt Koplik]

Sure, sure. It's this memory place. Just bringing. He was bringing his sister out of his memory and out of the couch cushion.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

It felt a little self conscious to me, but.

[Matt Koplik]

Oh, it was very self conscious.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

You know what I mean? But I mean, I was like, well, I didn't forget it.

[Matt Koplik]

I just say we all remember it. And for a memory play one more. Could you say Amy Jo Jackson? This has been delightful. Our technology has been trying to fuck us left, right and center. Really has. So we're gonna, we're gonna try to wrap things up as quick as possible while we still have the connection. Where can people find you if you want the them to find you?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

My website, Amy Jo Jackson.com has my doings, my comings and my goings and then Instagram at Amy Jo Jackson.

[Matt Koplik]

Thank you very much. If you want to follow me, I'm on Instagram only. Matt Koplik. Usual spelling. If you like the podcast, give us a nice 5 star rating or review. It really helps with the algorithm. We have a discord channel. Make sure you join that you can talk to other listeners about shows you've just seen, Ticket advice. You can check share media that's floating around of theater questions you have about theater. You can also complain about anything I said that was incorrect or you disagree with. Lord knows many of the listeners do that. If you want to contact me directly, you can join the sub stack or you can read a lot of the articles we're posting from the podcast on the sub stack. And that's it for now. Amy Jo, what diva do you want to close out with today for your episode?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Because my relationship to the Glass Menagerie is shaped an awful lot by Gypsy. I felt I had to go with a Mama Rose, but I wanted to go with a Mama Rose that is also one of my personal divas and my personal heroes. So I would like to go with Angela Lansbury, please.

[Matt Koplik]

Damn. There we go. Fantastic. We're gonna close out with Mrs. Claus. That's what we're gonna do.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Please?

[Matt Koplik]

No, no, no. Well, do you want to do her? Gypsy? Is that the one you want to close out with?

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Yeah, let's do her. Some People. Why not?

[Matt Koplik]

Fantastic. With the first woman to option up at the end of Some People Bonaro and Bless.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Bless. Because that fits some of our voce's better.

[Matt Koplik]

You know it sure do. It sure do. All right. Well, thank you for listening, guys. I'm not sure what the next episode's gonna be. That's part of the fun of it. So we will see you for the next time no matter what it is. Thank you for stopping by. Take it away, Angie. Bye.

[Amy Jo Jackson]

Goodbye to blueberry pie Good greatness to all the the socials I had to go to all the lodges I had to play all the shriners I said hello to hey la, I'm coming your way Some people sit on their butts Got the dream yeah, but not the guts.