ANDY DRACHENBERG: What is The Glass Menagerie about in your eyes?
BRIAN J. SMITH: In my eyes, The Glass Menagerie is a call for compassion. If Tennessee Williams had a genius for anything as a writer, I think it would be his endless fund of compassion for the most unexpected people. I think that Williams had a real genius, especially in this play because it’s so personal to him – it’s about his family, about people that he knew. He had the ability to call on assets of compassion, communicate it to an audience, and elicit that response from them in a way that he hadn’t done in any play.
AD: What was your first introduction to The Glass Menagerie? Do you remember it?
BJS: My first experience with the Glass Menagerie is pretty typical, we read it in high school. We had to. And of course I think it’s great that you do that in high school because it does expose you to a lot of stuff that you know later on in your life will have some meaning for you… But I didn’t know how to step into that world then. It’s so funny to me that it took a boy from Yorkshire (director John Tiffany) to show a bunch of American actors how really incredible this play is.
AD: What is your favorite line from the script? Why does it stand out to you?
BJS: My favorite line of the play is “he skipped the light fantastic out of town”. It’s in Tom’s first monologue and he’s talking about his father, and then in Tom’s very last monologue, one of the last things that he says is “for now adays all the world is lit by lightning!” There’s just something about those two lines with the light and the lightning… I mean “skipped the light fantastic out of town”-maybe that was a pretty common saying somewhere, but I think that it is now because of Tennessee Williams. He sort of immortalized that verbal image. Whatever it is, whatever it means – and it means different things to different people – I think that’s part of the poetry and the power of this play. It’s not something that you know, it’s something that you feel.
AD: What about the show has led to it receiving such an embracing return to Broadway?
BJS: This reincarnation of ‘The Glass Menagerie’ is all because of John Tiffany. He’s got a vision and a connection to this material that goes beyond just doing a show that’s going to be critically successful or financially successful. It comes from John Tiffany’s love affair with this story. John really took Tennessee’s idea of plastic theatre and the idea that this is a memory play and ran with it. I think that’s why this is going to be a special experience for people. It all comes from the way that John opened his heart to it.
AD: What is “plastic” theatre?
BJS: Tennessee defined plastic theatre as a combination of-at the time what was in vogue- very naturalistic, beginnings of the “actor’s studio model” with an aesthetic that involves movement, mime, and music in unexpected places in a sort of expressionistic way of designing a set. It calls for designing a play in a way that’s very open and not literal, and it calls for an acting style that’s real-but at the same time- it’s naturalistic, but it’s also poetic. It’s also got that something else that isn’t quite the way that you and I talk on the street. Even Jim, as prosaic and sort of homey as he is as a character, there’s something about him that’s dreamy almost. And I think that’s this idea of plastic theatre: combining everyday naturalism and a dream. [Tennessee Williams] was one of the first American playwrights to really use that technique and make it his own.
AD: Tell me a bit about Jim – who is he in this story? Where does he come from? How is she different from everybody else in the story?
BJS: In the reading version of the play, Tennessee has these character descriptions where he talks about Amanda and he talks about Tom and Laura – describing these characters. When he gets to Jim, the only thing he says is “a nice ordinary young man.” I think that it’s really tempting to want to stop there. John [Tiffany] was interested in the irony behind that statement. There’s a lot of space around it, and there’s a lot to fill in. What is Jim’s relationship to that statement? I think that’s how we started with the character is not just to make him a “nice, ordinary young man,” but to make him a full complex human being who the world thinks is just a “nice, ordinary young man”. Sometimes he plays into it, and sometimes he wants to take off that mask and really be himself. And in the moment he has with Laura and the thing they share together, she somehow allows him to be the best that he can be. He’s just as mixed up, heart broken and full of the need to get out and be his biggest self as Tom is. I wonder if this moment in the Wingfield living room is the best that he ever is.
AD: The world in the play paints an incredibly intimate family portrait, however your character is a step outside of that – can you tell me a bit about that dynamic?
BJS: Jim is really just there to go to dinner. That’s what all the great scenes start off with – you don’t come into plays thinking life is about to change – Jim has no idea. Jim is in the fog of his normal life, and then something happens. He has no idea he’s about to have this Tennessee Williams poetic experience.
AD: What sort of experiences have you had working on the show?
BJS: It was very fun. I mean that three-letter word… It sort of describes how awesome this experience has been for me, but it falls short. We spend a lot of time as actors going “Remind me why I’m doing this.” This is one of those things where you don’t have to ask yourself why you’re doing it. Showing up and doing the play every night is the answer. It’s unlike any experience I’ve had in the theatre. It’s fun and free and frightening and scary in all the best ways. This play has an impact on people and it’s a gift for us to be able to do it.
AD: Do you have a favorite moment in the story or a favorite moment on stage each night?
BJS: My favorite scene to watch in the show is the final scene in Act One where Tom teasingly reveals that he’s actually going to bring the gentleman caller home and Amanda is just desperate to find out anything. When you’re just reading the play it can come off a little boring, but the way that Zach [Quinto] and Cherry [Jones] play that scene is so funny and warm. It’s really the last time you see those two characters having that warm mother-son joking relationship. That’s what you want so badly for them to have and to be. And you realize that’s why Tennessee put that scene there. Because you see the potential they have, and the rapport and chemistry they have as two human beings. I’ve seen it many times and it still makes me laugh.
AD: What are you hoping audiences experience at the show?
BJS: I hope that when the lights go down and the audience is filing out of the Booth Theatre, that they feel a little bit tender and a little bit raw. I hope that that feeling takes them out to the street, and I hope it takes them home and takes them to someone that they love or someone they haven’t talked to or seen in a long time; maybe someone who they haven’t been able to forgive or someone that they wrote off. I hope that they’re able to find a new space in life for compassion. The whole show is a dream and an exorcism. He’s trying very hard to purge these feelings of guilt, shame, and pain for leaving them. And I hope that that journey finds its resting place in the people who watch the show.
BRIAN J. SMITH (Jim). Broadway: The Columnist; Come Back, Little Sheba,Manhattan Theatre Club. Off-Broadway: Glass Menagerie, ART; Good Boys and True, Second Stage; Three Changes, Playwrights Horizons. Television/Film: “Stargate Universe” (Lt. Scott), “Red Faction: Origins,” “Defiance,” “Warehouse 13,” SyFy Network; “Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express”;”Unforgettable”; “Blue Bloods”; “Gossip Girl”; “The Good Wife”; “Person of Interest”; “Law and Order”; “Coma”; Hate Crime(Trey); The War Boys; Red Hook. B.F.A. Juilliard.