Pretty, Sure. But Not Gorgeous.

The parade of Tennessee Williams’ ephemera seems to be
inexhaustible. A few months after The New Group presented a stage adaptation of
his unproduced screenplay One Arm comes
Cause Celebre’s production of The Pretty
Trap, a brief, one-act version of The
Glass Menagerie that isn’t remarkably different until its final scene.

Just because an earlier version of an American classic
exists does not necessarily mean that it deserves to be staged, however. Everything
about The Pretty Trap feels like an
exercise in pentimento; beneath Antony Marsellis’ staging (he does better work
here than he did on The Shoemaker, which runs in rep with The Pretty Trap), we can see glimpses of previous Amanda Wingfields
and of previous interpretations. And The Pretty Trap certainly does nothing to
make the wishy-washy Laura Wingfield any more palatable.

Until the play ends on an optimistic note—one that is
definitely missing from The Glass
Menagerie—it’s really nothing more than an academic exercise. Katharine
Houghton is gamely chipper as Amanda, but her smiling, chattering performance
carries more than a hint of the daffiness undercut by causticity that Katherine
Helmond cornered the market on in the 1970s and ’80s. There’s no grandeur to
her portrayal of that formidable matriarch, so determined to find a better life
for herself through her daughter and yet simultaneously dismissive of both her
children for not succeeding. Of course, the role in this draft isn’t the same
towering presence that has drawn actresses of a certain age to The Glass Menagerie, but neither
Houghton nor Marsellis convey glimmers of what would come.

As for Williams’ stand-in, the wary Tom (Loren Dunn), he’s even more of a
cipher here than in The Glass Menagerie,
doing little more than introducing Laura’s gentleman caller, Jim, to the
household before retreating to silence punctuated by the occasional barbed
remark. Robert Eli is appropriately hearty as Jim, though the abbreviated arc
of his time with Laura necessarily diminishes the character’s impact. And Nisi
Sturgis’ tremulous performance as Laura—here unaffected by any physical
malady—highlights all of the character’s shortcomings. She’s nervous to the
point of incapacity, and one finally fully understands Amanda’s impatience with
her for failing so completely at life.

Ray Klausen’s set is appropriately dingy in a genteel way,
and Davis Toser’s costumes are the right mix of faded elegance. That same sense
of fading pervades every aspect of The
Pretty Trap, though, leaving what would come to peek out at audiences
tantalizingly. Without The Glass
Menagerie as a reference, this 55-minute play simply doesn’t succeed on its
own merits as a piece of theater.

The Pretty Trap

Through Aug. 21, Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.),
www.causecelebre.info; $66.25.