Theater

Style counts more than words in ‘Glass Menagerie’

This revival of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” arrives on Broadway from Cambridge, Mass., with the excitement usually reserved for “Breaking Bad” and cronuts: It’s genius! You need it!

Well, not quite.

This is a fine evening at the theater, not a divine revelation. The show is a good take on Williams’ memory play, and Zachary Quinto and Cherry Jones offer interesting spins on familiar characters — even if Jones’ execution doesn’t match her concept of the role.

Her character, Amanda Wingfield, is one of the great over-the-top stage mothers, the nonsinging version of Mama Rose from “Gypsy.” A former Southern belle fallen on hard times in 1930s St. Louis, Amanda’s dead set on finding a husband for her lame, pathologically shy daughter, Laura (Celia Keenan-Bolger).

Breaking from the usual portrayal as a domineering, manipulative egomaniac, Jones’ Amanda is largely sympathetic. She’s pushy but clearly means well — she just wants to secure a safe future for Laura, whose mental fragility prevents her from holding a job.

We know all this because Jones, the Tony-winning star of “The Heiress” and “Doubt,” acts with a capital A. You always see the cogs whirring behind her affected performance. Boy, this pretending thing is a lot of work!

Quinto (TV’s “American Horror Story,” Spock in the “Star Trek” reboots) fares better with Tom, Amanda’s son and the play’s narrator. Deftly walking the thin line between angry frustration and subtle camp mannerisms, his Tom — the playwright’s stand-in — is likely gay, tomcatting in bars when he’s meant to be at the movies.

Brian J. Smith is just as effective as the gentleman caller, a good ol’ boy who’s unwittingly set up on a date with Laura. His kindness toward her is heartbreaking, and their scene together is the most powerful of the show. Never mind that of Laura’s beloved collection of glass animals, we see only a unicorn — a heavy-handed way to tell us she’s a lonely oddity.

Yet rather than any individual performance, what sticks with you is the overall mood of the piece created by director John Tiffany and his team — which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s seen Tiffany’s musical “Once.”

Bob Crowley’s set is dominated by two striking elements. One is a fire escape that tapers up into the air, as if disappearing into infinity — though the effect is ruined if you sit in the back of the orchestra.

The other is a moat of black water around the stage, turning the Wingfields’ apartment into a little island cut off from the mean outside world.

The ghostly atmosphere is compounded by lighting designer Natasha Katz’s perpetual dusk, Nico Muhly’s eerie original score and Steven Hoggett’s solemn choreographing of a kitchen routine. Taken together, they match Williams’ melancholy poetry on a gut level. No wonder this fire escape leads nowhere.