| re: Well... | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 02:03 pm EDT 08/19/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Well... - ryhog 11:10 am EDT 08/17/22 | |
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| I don't find it that that weird but just a bit weird. What is weird is that we don't see the staircase between floors, and the ladder seems to run up above where we can see, so, as you say, it looks like people would have no way to get out except via the ladder. And it does look like you would have to be in very good shape indeed to manage getting on the ladder by climbing over the railing (as that looks like the only way to do it) and even then it might be pretty difficult and even risky. Yet in the distance, we do see see stairs on a fire escape in what seems to be another building. That is one of two Glass Menagerie sketches in the first of the two Mielziner books, with notes from him that don't directly address what you're mentioning. And none of the photos I have found of either the original production or the tour would answer your question. In a few, you can see the lower part of the ladder and just a bit of the landing above, but that's all. The middle image on the page I am linking might answer the question if we could see it by clicking on it. It is captioned "Set design (including fire escape) by Jo Mielziner for the 1945 production of the play 'The Glass Menagerie.'" Unfortunately, if you click on it, the page you are taken to says "This item is available onsite at NYPL." I can't even tell if the photo is a model (probably) or a photo of the set onstage but brightly lit and with no one onstage. It's also too bad that we can't download any of the images on the page. In his book, Mielziner wrote that the play "can be presented with unusual freedom of convention." On the one hand, it seems a bit unlikely that the point was that the fire escapes in this building would be very difficult to use to escape, but on the other hand, maybe that was the idea. I still wish I could figure out if they live on the ground floor or on a higher floor. It certainly looks like the ground floor in that design but the text seems to me suggest otherwise, although not definitively. |
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| Link | Two Mielziner Glass Menagerie sketches and perhaps a model |
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