Glass Menagerie, The

Roundabout Theater has an Off-Broadway winner in Gordon Edelstein's acclaimed production from New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre of Tennessee Williams' groundbreaking and haunting memory play, The Glass Menagerie, which has received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination as Outstanding Revival of a Play.

It's hard to imagine Judith Ivey topping her recent portrayal of Ann Landers in The Lady with All the Answers, but she takes the classic character of Amanda Wingfield and dusts off the cobwebs to breathe new life into it. Since Menagerie's auspicious Broadway premiere in 1945, directed by Eddie Dowling (the sometime writer, lyricist, composer, and designer who also played the role of Tom) and Margo Jones (who directed the playwright's Summer and Smoke and produced Inherit the Wind), the esteemed Laurette Taylor has maintained ownership of the definitive portrayal for 65 years. That might all change now. Ivey's critically-acclaimed performance, and the performances of the excellent co-stars - Patch Darragh, Keira Keeley and Michael Mosley, not to mention Lortel nominated outstanding director Edlestein's reimaging might become the measure by which future productions are judged.

Ivey had big shoes to fill: Miss Taylor, Maureen Stapleton in the first and second revivals (1965 and 1975), Jessica Tandy (1983) and Julie Harris (1994). Each of the revivals was terribly short-lived. Some may wish to include Jessica Lange's 2005 portrayal in the longest-running revival, 120 performances. However, Ivey's performance and this Glass Menagerie could have a long Broadway run in the right theater.

While the writing is bittersweet, often very dramatic, often very funny, in most productions it feels stilted. Here, in the hands of Ivey and company, it's quite real. And though you may not have had a mother like Amanda Wingfeld, you probably knew someone who did - especially if you are from the South.

Ivey, a Lortel nominee for Outstanding Actress, is so grating as the much-too-doting mother, that you want to wring her neck to shut her up; however, and with great panache, she brings Amanda to life as she has rarely been before. Notice her ever-subtle mannerisms, particularly the small things (for instance, the way she purses her lips when she emits those stares of death; and the way she wipes the coffee cup after every sip just like all genteel Southern belles of a certain age still do).

At times, with all her talk of gentleman callers, she even seems to take on the persona of Blanche Dubois, especially in her ruminations about the ole Blue Mountain, Mississippi, plantation of old, even a little Scarlett O'Hara and Mama Rose.

It's good to have Ivey back onstage has been sorely missed. She directed last year's short-lived Second Stage production of David Kirshenbaum/Jack Heifner's Vanities, also The American Dream and The Sandbox, and her Sally Durant in Roundabout's 2001 Follies are still remembered.

Hers isn't the only dazzling performance in this perfectly-cast revival of Glass Menagerie. Patch Darragh, a Lortel nominee for Outstanding Actor, as restless son Tom who's mad as hell and can't take it anymore and who's on the reckless path to repeat the mistakes of his father, is a revelation. His last major role was Doc Porter in Roundabout/Kathleen Turner's 2008 bombastic revival of Beth Henley's Crimes of the Hearts. There wasn't a hint then that he could give such a performance of pent-up frustration and often silent rage that's eating him alive.

Michael Mosley as Jim O'Connor, the long-awaited Gentleman Caller, arrives in what would have been Act Three with some much-needed change of pace, energy and comic relief in a classic that runs on much too long. It could easily have been trimmed by the master by 20 minutes.

In her first major role, it would appear that a star is born in Keira Keeley. Her heartbreaking portrayal of crippled, disastrously shy daughter Laura, who lives in a fantasy world and is as fragile as her glass menagerie collection, will be forever etched in your memory. Many times, especially doing quiet and silent moments, she reminds so much of the very young Cherry Jones as Kitty Chase in her second credited Off-Broadway role in Michael Weller's short-lived 1984 The Ballad of Soapy Smith at the Public Theater. You have to wait a long time for all her pain to go away and for her to smile, but her Act Three reaction to a compliment from her Gentleman Caller emits a radiant beam that uplifts her (and our) heart which is no longer a lonely hunter.