The Glass Cage

The Glass Cage deals with the McBanes, an Edwardian upper class family who share a one sided view of the world. Unless you are white and come from prestigious money than you do not fit into their equation. That is at least until the three siblings of the rebel in the family, by the name of Charlie, (who of course isn’t alive anymore), enter the picture. The play basically begins with these siblings being allowed to visit the more upper class McBane clan, in the hopes of making peace between the families. These siblings, by the names of Jean (Jeannie Serralles), Angus (Saxon Palmer), and Douglas (Aaron Krohn), all have come to visit their relatives, unbeknownst to them, in order to receive the deed for their father’s share of the family business. However, David (Gerry Bamman), Malcom (Jack Wetherall-David’s brother), and Mildred (Robin Moseley-David’s wife) all know that that’s exactly what they came for, and that’s because they never trusted Charlie. (How can these people hope to ever make peace with the rest of the family, if they always suspect them of being up to no good?). The three siblings have very irascible temperaments, compared to the waspier McBane clan. They may at first seem fresh to the audience (I mean in the form of relief; they are initially exciting to watch because of their rebellious nature against their devout pure minded relatives). However, neither this nor the pure quality of the upper class McBane’s lasts and this is because everyone’s true colors come up once the play has reach its duration. That color is one of grey.

The subtlety of The Glass Cage results from the fact that the three siblings don’t actually want the money owed to their father. The scene where Douglas tears the deed is shocking because the audience realizes that what the siblings really wanted was a strange form of revenge, that makes their relatives realize that their actions led to the death of their father. They want their relatives to realize that they are, in fact, better than them because they, like their father, were not greedy like they are. By the end of the play, the siblings each separately have their own epiphanies where they realize how wrong they were in the assumptions of their relatives. They realize that they are inappropriately placing all the blame on David when David never knew that his brother was shorted on the money owed to him. At the same time that this happens, David realizes that his brother and wife (the people in his life that he upmost cares about because they are complete opposites from people like Charlie and his three children) knew all along that they were shorting his brother on his end of the bargain. The whole family realizes that their presumptions were false. They realize that they should be more open to someone who is different, especially in terms of class and race.

The acting that is in this play is very exciting to witness. (The direction, and everything related to the production of The Glass Cage is solid—it’s amazing that the whole play takes place around a sitting room. The aesthetics are solid with the exception of the way that the set resembles a glass cage. The theme of the play becomes too obvious in this instance and too modernist as well. Modernism is something that Priestly was rebelling against upon writing The Glass Cage—he was against the notion of the modern young man rebelling against the system, which was a popular theatre conceit at that time, because of the presumptions implicit in that action.) The Mint theatre company has done a great job of utilizing their actors, particularly the three siblings. All of the main actors in this play change characteristics and emotional traits by the time the play ends. These characters have all learned something about themselves.

I am just going to discuss one scene in terms of the acting aspect of this production. It involves the three siblings when they have a moment of peace away from their upper class relatives. They start to sing and dance to a Canadian tune; the way that these people suddenly become animated is in such stark contrast to the acting in other plays that I have witnessed. They are actually inventive in the ways that they dance to this jig; in the ways that they play their parts. That jig represents on the actors end their rebellion against the ways in which a part should be played, in much the same way that the three siblings rebel against the ways in which they should behave in this household. The acting in this play is inventive, and adds layers to Priestley’s initial intentions.

The first appearances in this play are very deceiving: In the beginning of the play the audience assumes wrongly that the three siblings are merely greedy, when in fact they are entirely not, and the purpose of this on the playwright J.B. Priestley’s part is to show that first appearances are not appropriate ways to characterize someone. To begin with, the play initially appears to be merely a very entertaining Edwardian farce. By the end of the play, I was glad that it transposed into something else entirely; something that was very moving. The Glass Cage becomes a type of play where every character that constitutes this family’s pretensions and facade’s leave them. This proves to be a highly emotional experience for this family because these facades where all that they lived by. Their lies were their identity and once the three siblings enact out everything that they have been working towards, they realize how inadequate their point of view really was. These characters realize by the end of the play that the reason for why they held a false view of the world (the false view being there in the first place because the siblings were so disguised that they even forgot how to view the world in the proper way) was what got in the way of their being successful financially. It’s a false view for one to have because it’s not logical in anyway. One should not make themselves suffer financially, in order to rebel against (supposed) greedy people who in their pasts have made others suffer financially. The three siblings, by the end of the play, realize that everything that their mother taught them was false because living simply to act out revenge begets the problem, and ultimately promulgates it for future family members. In the process of acting out revenge you begin to view everyone who doesn’t conform to your viewpoint negatively as well. Revenge is not the adequate means of doing something, if it deprives you and your loved ones in the process. All of this goes through Jean, Angus, and eventually Douglas’ mind by the end of the play. What’s great about The Glass Cage is that this goes through their mind implicitly rather than it being merely stated to the audience.

If an audience member doesn’t pick up the subtleties of the play, then I can very well see why they don’t get The Glass Cage; they want a more obvious form of class warfare depicted on the stage. These people who don’t get J.B. Priestley’s sensibility, are living in their own glass cages and they don’t realize it. They don’t want to see a play where the characters double back on their form of revenge. They want to see the revenge carried out to its fullest potential, for entertainment purposes. The problem with this is that an audience member, in my opinion, doesn’t learn anything about their own consequences if the material isn’t presented in a subtle fashion. The Glass Cage is the type of play where “action” doesn’t get in the way; doesn’t distract an audience member from the implications being directed towards them. What happens in the process, is that J.B. Priestley is basically pointing his finger on all of us for simply using inadequate (for being merely based on presumption) base judgments on people. We all have done this in the past, and that’s why certain people don’t like the play; they don’t want to reflect on their own flawed actions. These audience members who say that the play is too classical (who say that the play is just another Edwardian play that’s too negligent in terms of characterization) don’t learn anything in the process, because they are shutting themselves off from the experience. They merely want to go on hating their relatives. Shouldn’t these fickle people realize that this play has a happy ending (or do they want to merely witness “deep” tragedy where nothing is resolved at the end?). I’m sorry, but I would rather take classical dramaturgy, and so would I feel the actors playing these parts. This is what I feel was going on in the actress Jeanine Serralles’ mind; she was teary eyed by the end of this play (and moved beyond comprehension by the writing of J.B. Priestley) because people weren’t getting it. How more modern can a play be?