Thursday. February 23.1989-TIME8-COURIER, Charleston, D-C-7

The heart breaks just like 'Glass' EIU's theatre department is sneMles aesperately to do her best winding up an eight-performance by them. Eudeikis works bravely, run of C.P. Blanchette's produc­ but little of this comes through, nor tion of Tennessee Williams' The is there the quality of the Glass Menagerie in the Fine Arts aristocrat, broken down, wasted Center Playroom. and lost. Written in 1944, The Glass Me­ As Tom, Gerald M. Lunsford is nagerie is perhaps the very best of somewhat too shrill, perhaps Williams, an unsentimental story overstating the bitterness and of loneliness and hurt, poetically anger of the frustrated poet at the told. Nearly all of its understated expense of the sadness. drama is spelled out by Tom, the The first act, concentrating on play's narrator. The time is 1945 these two characters, is slow-going and back into the 1930s. Tom tells lebovitz is revtewer-aHarge for the Journal at times, but, happily, everything us of his ambitions to be a writer Gazette and Times-Courier comes beautifully to life in the se­ and escape the trap of his meager cond act during Laura's brief en­ life with his prattling mother spent and where she refused the counter with the Gentleman Amanda and his crippled sister rich planters' sons because she lost Caller. Looking like sort of a cross Laura. He focuses on an episode her heart to a man who worked for between Joan Allen, who played when Amanda persuaded him to the phone company, is one of the Laura at Eastern in 1975 and to bring home a "Gentleman Caller" great roles of American theatre, whom the current production is as a possible match for Laura. played on stage or screen by dedicated, and a young Jane Throughout Tom's reminiscence, Laurette Taylor, Gertrude Wyman, who played her in the nothing much happens, but Lawrence, Helen Hayes, Maureen original movie version, Catherine Williams steadily and skillfully Stapleton, Shirley Booth, A. Palfenier makes a lovely, ra­ reveals his characters. A quiet, Katharine Hepburn and Joanne diant Laura, dreaming, wounded, iety and heartbreak, and the close fragile mood-piece, it needs in­ Woodward. almost other-worldly. Jason by candlelight is a moment of finite care for the development of In Eastern's student production, Eklund, as the visitor Jim, gives a magic. its statement. she's being played in a sweet, performance that's a charming The set is by Blanchette, the Amanda, aging, frowzy, living in chirpy one-note by Alison blend of cocky enthusiasm and costumes by Donna C. Conrad and a dinky flat off a st. Louis alley Eudeikis. Amanda is a woman who gentleness. Thanks to their acting the lighting by Carolyn Moran. that's .a far cry from the Deep nags, scolds, pleads, cajoles and and Blanchette's sensitive direc­ The final performances are South where her girlhood was hammers .liway at ,her children as tion, it's a scene full or ardor, anx- tonight and Friday at 8.