Go! review

I guess by this point, it would be easy to caricaturize the strong personalities of Tennessee Williams’ plays.

He did it himself in the 1956 film “Baby Doll,” his first time writing specifically for the screen, to parlay the themes of the fallen South into broad comedy.

But there’s something amiss about Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, a troupe devoted to classic plays, turning Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” into a parlour comedy.

Being a self-proclaimed “dream play,” we would naturally expect the characters to be drawn rather broadly and exaggerated in the mind of Tom, the narrator and authorial intrusion on the event.

But Drew Fracher’s direction pitches “The Glass Menagerie” at the level of a situation comedy, as if mining the laughs instead of letting them flow from dreamy surrealism. Amanda is an outrageous character in Tom’s memory, to be sure, but guest artist Irene Crist would have her more at home in network television than serious theater. Brian Isaac Phillips, who has shown his dramatic chops many times over in area stages, gives us a Tom who is far too cheerful through most of the play, and should have used the same melancholy with which he delivers the final, tear-inducing monologue, as a touchstone for the rest of the show.

The second act finds better footing as the family welcomes the gentleman caller (Christopher Guthrie). Here, Amanda’s pomposity seems about right as she puts on happy airs in hopes of landing a mate for her daughter, and by the time we get to the candlelight interlude between Laura and the gentleman caller, this production strikes exactly the right tone.

WHAT: “The Glass Menagerie”
WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati
WHEN: Previews Feb. 20-21; opening night Feb. 22; continues through March 16
COST: $12 preview; $20-$26 for run
MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com