ANDY DRACHENBERG: Why is The Glass Menagerie a project that you wanted to work on?
CHERRY JONES: John Tiffany had this idea that I should play Amanda Wingfield. He is so charming and so gifted that I thought, I’ll at least do a reading for him. When I did the reading for him, I thought these are some monkey bars I’d love to play on! And I was in. I knew that with John Tiffany, Bob Crowley and Natasha Katz this production was going to be gorgeous, thrilling and unlike any Glass anyone had seen before.
AD: What about the show has led to it receiving such an embracing return to Broadway?
CJ: Our production is reintroducing audiences to a great American masterpiece in a way that they’ve never seen it before. It’s vivid, it’s funny. These people love each other. It is stunning to look at. The music is incredibly, perfectly evocative of what’s going on. The play is written as a perfect quartet and we love being on stage together. Audiences are responding to the energy, the beauty and the love that we bring to what is already on the page, written by the brilliant Tennessee Williams. If people don’t love each other then you don’t care and it’s not tragic. It’s the Wingfield family love that makes Glass so funny and so tragic.
AD: Why is this story so impacting for our society?
CJ: John Tiffany has heightened the experience for us all. This sounds so immodest to say about something that you’re working on, but I really feel that people have a tremendously cathartic experience watching our production of this masterpiece. People bring their own baggage, heartache, regret, guilt, and family dynamic when they come to this play, and they’re taken somewhere that they have never been taken before.
AD: What is your favorite line in The Glass Menagerie?
CJ: It’s impossible to say what my favorite line is, but there’s one line that’s not a famous line, when Laura’s afraid that the gentleman caller is going to be the boy that she loved in high school Amanda says to Laura, “It won’t be him! It isn’t the least bit likely.” I just love that line because I love saying “him” with a southern accent!
AD: Do you have a favorite scene to perform or to watch?
CJ: I don’t have a favorite scene, but I get to watch two scenes and they’re both brilliant. One of the scenes is between Laura and Tom, when Tom staggers home drunk, and it takes my breath away every night. I also intently watch and listen to the gentleman caller scene every single night. I tell you, if Celia [Keenan-Bolger] and Brian [J. Smith] refine that scene anymore, I don’t know how anyone’s going to be able to walk out of the theatre. It’s the most exquisitely played scene I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s one of the greatest scenes ever written. They just do it like it’s nobody’s business. It just gets better and better and better.
AD: Tell me a bit about Amanda.
CJ: Amanda has been placed in an impossible position. She’s from Mississippi and she’s been abandoned in the North by her no account husband, left alone with two little children to raise by herself. She has to feed, clothe and shelter these children. But there is more to this woman than a southern belle. Her life has not turned out so well and she’s still desperately in love with the man who left her. All of the speeches about her gentleman callers [show that] the South was her only reference point. If that’s been your whole life until you move to this bleak place where you’ve been abandoned, of course you’re going to think about the cicadas and the lemonade on a gorgeous old porch in beautiful Victorian clothing. That’s what she knew. I have great respect for her, and I have an understanding of her. But this is a woman fixated on the future and on the happiness and success of her children. That is paramount to her.
CHERRY JONES (Amanda). Broadway and Off- Broadway: Doubt (Tony, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle and Obie Awards), Lincoln Center Theater’s production of The Heiress (Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards); Pride’s Crossing(Drama Desk Award); The Baltimore Waltz (Obie Award); Faith Healer; Flesh and Blood; Imaginary Friends; A Moon for the Misbegotten (Tony Award nomination); Angels in America; Our Country’s Good (Tony Award nomination);and Roundabout Theater Company’s productions of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Major Barbara, and The Night of the Iguana. The Glass Menagerie marked a return to A.R.T. where Ms. Jones is a founding member and earlier in her career appeared in more than 25 productions as a company member, including Twelfth Night, The Three Sisters, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Television: President Allison Taylor in “24” (Emmy Award), “What Makes a Family,” and most recently the series “Awake.” Film: Ocean’s Twelve, Cradle Will Rock, The Horse Whisperer, The Perfect Storm, Erin Brockovich, Signs, The Village, Mother and Child, Swimmers, and Terrence Malick’s upcoming Knight of Cups.