Congrats to TOTS for challenging show

Rick Mauch

Let’s be honest. In today’s world, if you ask a lot of people to describe Tennessee Williams they’ll likely say it’s some kind of whiskey they haven’t tasted yet.

And while it is true that it might take a shot of a strong drink to cope with the subject matter of his plays, Williams’ works are among the greatest ever written. He had that rare ability to present gloom in a way that keeps an audience watching, hoping against hope that the characters might find a way to conquer an unforgiving, harsh world and find happiness.

Hint: They don’t.

You’re not going to laugh during a Tennessee Williams play. You might cry — in fact, in many instances, it’s a challenge to keep from crying.

But what you will do is take a good long look at the life around you. And that is something folks — be it back when he was writing and even today — just aren’t comfortable doing.

So, let me say kudos to Theatre Off The Square (TOTS) in Weatherford for making, their first show of 2026 “The Glass Menagerie.” It’s a semi-autobiographical play by Williams — and it’s definitely not your typical community theater production of today.

The story is about a family’s struggles in 1930s St. Louis. It is narrated by the main character, Tom Wingfield (Luke Neumann), who deals daily with his overbearing mother Amanda (Sharla Farmer), who clings desperately to a Southern past and memories much better than the reality she now employs.

Amanda’s mission in life is to find a husband for her daughter, the reclusive and physically challenged Laura (Sarah Kate Barton). Realizing the odds are against her and feeling less of a person because of her mother’s constant reminders of her own “gentleman callers” in her day, Laura finds solace in her collection of delicate glass figurines.

Yes, it sounds dark — and it is. It gets even darker when Tom, after being coerced by Amanda, brings home a co-worker (Coleman Hahn), both lifting Laura’s spirits as high as they’ve ever been and dashing them perhaps lower than she could have imagined.

Among the characters routinely anchoring a Williams play is the fragile misfit, in this case Laura. Likewise for the faded Southern Belle, aka Amanda. Then, there’s the character with the haunted memory, such as Tom.

To pull off a Williams show it takes tremendous chemistry and a deep understanding of the characters by the cast. These aren’t characters you rehearse, go home, and come back the next day to rehearse again. They require living in the very skin of to get the true vibe of what the world means to them and them to the world.

I got that from this cast. 

In being completely transparent, it is imperative that you understand what you are going to see with a Tennessee Williams show. If you don’t, your ticket purchases are basically nothing more than a donation — of course, there’s nothing wrong with a donation to TOTS or any of the fine live theatre organizations we have around us.

But challenge yourself. The other shows will always be there for the next time, so you can laugh, or hold your breath in anticipation of the next tense moment.

You have two more weekends to go see it, this one and the next. Check the TOTS website — theatreoffthesquare.org — for tickets and times.

These sort of shows don’t come around much any more. Here’s hoping for more.

Now, speaking of whiskey, a toast to Tennessee Williams and TOTS.

Rick Mauch is a regular contributor to The Community News.