Theatre in Review: The Whole of Time (A/Park Productions at The Brick)The Glass Menagerie is a kind of cat's-cradle, designed to ensnare its four characters in an inextricable web of responsibilities and resentments. Not for nothing is Tennessee Williams' alternate, one-act version of his masterpiece titled The Pretty Trap: Amanda, the aging belle lost in memories of her coquettish youth, is legitimately horrified that her two adult children are on a fast track to ruin and obscurity. Laura, her withdrawn, clubfooted daughter, is cripplingly shy, unable to attract the sort of husband who, Amanda hopes, might provide respectability, fiscal and otherwise. Tom, Amanda's son, is desperate to get away from his stifling home, its air thick with illusions, but he is his mother and sister's sole support. It's a deceptive piece of work, delicate to the touch yet tough as chromium, its elegiac tone hiding some brutal conclusions: Amanda's stratagems will fail, the young man who briefly connects with Laura will have a girlfriend, and Tom will flee his loved ones, remaining perpetually haunted by them. Playwright Romina Paula is clearly haunted by The Glass Menagerie, too, although it is hard to say why. (She isn't the first: In addition to The Pretty Trap, a musical version titled Blue Roses has been floating around for years. And then there's John Guare's You Lied to Me About Centralia, which focuses on the Gentleman Caller and his problematic future wife.) Updating the action to Buenos Aires in this century, The Whole of Time is bent on examining (and taking apart) the mechanics of Williams' script. But this extractive approach leaves little of interest; in probing the play's heart, she kills it off. Indeed, Paula is intent on flipping the characters' intentions. Antonia, the Laura figure, is a thoroughly competent, independent-minded young woman who sees no reason to leave her home. Tom, who is almost certainly gay -- we see him lip-synching to a lachrymose pop tune, wearing a woman's leopard coat -- can't decide whether to run away or remain in his chair, polishing off a copy of Moby-Dick. Far from being a middle-aged frump with a romanticized past, the mother, Ursula, is well-turned-out, even dishy, with a chic wardrobe. Maximiliano, Lorenzo's friend, is a handsome but dumb, leather-jacketed lug with a dese-dem-dose accent. He looks like an actor auditioning to play the Gentleman Caller. The characters in The Glass Menagerie are stuck in an emotional deadlock that can only lead to tragedy. The people in The Whole of Time are bumper cars, running into each other, causing little damage. They are chatty, quirky, and occasionally quarrelsome; unlike their predecessors, they are incapable of misguided hope or profound sorrow. Instead of constructing a play, Paula is writing about writing, plucking notions from Williams and giving them to Lorenzo and the others to expound upon. For example, the play begins with an extended (and, to my mind, pointless) discussion of romantic murderers. As Antonia notes, "Probably in Mexico, people forgive or tolerate somebody killing his wife and then selling millions of records where he sings to the dead woman he misses so much. It's a question of distance, distancing, getting past it. A sense of humor. It's looking at it humorously." This line of thought, like so many others, leads to a dead end. When Ursula notes, "Silence can do a lot of damage," Lorenzo replies, "I don't know if I agree with that. Sometimes the truth is, I prefer not to know. It seems to me that sometimes not saying things can be an act of kindness, too, of care. I'd say that the great percentage of all the things I know about you, if you'd given me the chance to choose, I'd prefer never to have heard them." That's telling her. And so it goes: There are impromptu dance sequences, bursts of classical and heavy metal music, and a drunk scene, which leads to a lot of yelling. Max falls asleep during the latter. Antonia proposes a mildly incestuous scenario in which she pretends to be the girlfriend of his dead brother, but real desire is absent. For reasons I can't explain, Frida Kahlo is a frequent topic of conversation, with several of her paintings turning up for discussion. In the most amusing exchange, after Antonia defends her reclusive way of life, Max asks, "So what do you live on?" For once, she is genuinely nonplussed. It might have helped if the director, Tony Torn, had pushed his actors to dig for some underlying tensions, or if the dialogue, translated by Jean Graham-Jones, didn't sound so much like carefully composed essay paragraphs rolling out of a printer. As it is, this is an oddly stilted affair, and the actors -- Ben Becher (Maximiliano), Ana B. Gabriel (Ursula), Lucas Salvagno (Lorenzo), and Josefina Scaro (Antonia) -- busily hit their marks as if racing through a catch-up rehearsal after a break in the performance schedule. (Interestingly, Gabriel, who at least gets to display a little temperament, brings to mind the late Geraldine Page, Torn's mother). It is astonishing that this modest production required three scenic designers, but Andromache Chalfant and Rebecca Lord-Surratt have arranged several well-chosen pieces of furniture to create a kind of all-purpose room. Donald Gallagher backs it up with a pair of beautifully painted walls. Jay Ryan's lighting lurches between a warm white wash and bursts of hot colors in the musical interludes; the latter aren't attractive, but that might be the point. Costume consultant Zane Gan dresses the actors cannily. Audio/video consultant Luke Santy efficiently provides the necessary music cues and various paintings seen in a picture frame on the upstage wall. Overall, The Whole of Time exudes a suffocatingly academic atmosphere; a thing of commentary, not drama, it exists for Paula to expound, in a random way, on Williams' themes and concepts. If only she had something truly cogent to say. --David Barbour 
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