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October 2006
‘Brooklyn Boy’ @ Jewish Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B+
Ira Zimmer, in one of the many poignant moments in Donald Margulies’ “Brooklyn Boy,” tells his childhood friend, Eric Weiss, “If there’s one thing Jews are good at, it’s grief.”
And as Jewish writers from Arthur Miller to Philip Roth have shown, they’re also good at laughter, nostalgia, compassion, tradition and storytelling, all abundantly on display in director Susan Reid’s heart-rending production of Margulies’ drama at the Jewish Theatre of the South. At times, though, the play seems old-fashioned in its Freudian father-and-son relationships and sentimental outpourings.
Weiss is a newly successful novelist who returns to Brooklyn, N.Y., to visit his dying father and encounters his old pal Zimmer for the first time in 25 years. The play —- loaded with classic themes of leaving home and returning, prodigal son-style —- is essentially Weiss’ middle-age journey to self-acceptance.
While Weiss constantly harps on his successful escape from Brooklyn, his best-selling book, “Brooklyn Boy,” is based on his Jewish childhood there, showing the borough’s hold on his soul. Along with his return to Brooklyn, he makes a trip to Los Angeles, where his book is being turned into a film. There, Weiss has an all-too-familiar encounter with the soul-deadening, materialistic side of Hollywood.
As Weiss, David de Vries gives a finely controlled, understated performance. Emotionally guarded and speaking in sound bites, Weiss appears almost robotic in contrast with the passion and humor displayed by those he encounters. But De Vries, who appears in every scene, succeeds in making this wary, decent, cautious man compelling and vibrant.
Andrew Benator delivers a stunning, complex portrayal of Zimmer, who suppressed his artistic talent and remained in Brooklyn. Although disappointed that he’s done nothing more with his life than take over his father’s deli and that he lives in the house he grew up in, he’s sustained by his Orthodox Jewish faith, family and community. At first wounded by Weiss’ abandonment, Zimmer comes to show deep compassion for his grieving friend. Benator fully explores the Yiddish-leavened language of Brooklyn, its zany rhythms and expressive inflections.
As Weiss’ sarcastic, ribald and manipulative father, Manny, Barry L. Anbinder presents a multicolored portrait of regret, abuse and waste. Remember “Death of a Salesman”? In this case, Manny works at a Buster Brown shoe store. A small life, perhaps. But in a sudden burst of poetry, Anbinder thrillingly delivers Manny’s unexpected testament to the satisfaction, even joy, of his work.
In striking, cameolike roles are Cynthia Barrett, as a finely nuanced Nina, Weiss’ estranged wife; Bradley Bergeron as an inarticulate young actor who would be at home on HBO’s “Entourage”; Jennifer Levison as a pushy Hollywood producer; and Sharon Zoe Litzky as a young woman who becomes infatuated with Weiss at a book reading.
The outstanding performances and Margulies’ language again show the magic of Brooklyn, the inspiration for countless movies, plays, novels and comedy routines.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 12. $18-$35. Jewish Theatre of the South, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654; www.jplay.org.
THE VERDICT: A poignant trip back to Brooklyn.
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‘Othello’ @ Georgia Shakespeare
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
It takes cheek to cut “Othello” down to size. But that is exactly what Brandon J. Dirden has done. The ambitious Atlanta actor not only turns the flabby 400-year-old tragedy into a lean, six-actor machine, he also stars, quite handsomely, as the Moor who marries into Venetian society, then loses everything in a fit of jealousy instigated by his “honest” friend.
But you know the story already, which is why Dirden’s economic approach makes the original version feel so extraneous.
Directed by Vincent Murphy, “Othello” closes Georgia Shakespeare’s season with a production that is as sexy-looking as one of those sleek designer hotel lobbies —- all flowing white curtains and padded furniture that begs one to get horizontal.
You kind of wonder if designer Kat Conley has been slung up at the downtown hotel bar BED, because beds are exactly what she makes for this triangle of red-hot lovers, who writhe on their commodious white mattresses on a floor as shiny and crimson as nail polish. Along with Dirden as Othello, there’s Park Krausen as Desdemona, John G. Preston as Iago, Joe Knezevich as Cassio —- and Kate Donadio and Chris Kayser as everything else. Everyone looks good in Sydney Roberts’ fetching costumes —- tights and tunics for the guys; pants and floor-sweeping jacket-things for the ladies.
Is it such a crime that we are all tragedy’d out and headed home in a cool two hours and 30 minutes? Dirden makes it happen by eliminating Roderigo and condensing the convoluted tale to its bare essence (pun intended). Iago is assigned most of the nasty business himself, and Preston plays the villain with such natural elegance that you believe every vile deed. Donadio, for her part, gets to play the Duke, as well as Emelia and Bianca, and she turns the latter part into a clueless bimbo with a baby-doll voice. Fun.
Krausen’s Desdemona seems modern somehow, not nearly so willing to kowtow to the Moor as we may recall from early readings. This is good. The biggest misstep of the otherwise ravishing production is the way Desdemona and Othello get so ridiculously high-strung in their final moments. I mean, you expect anyone who is about to be strangled to go a little dingy, but Krausen plays it in the style of a ’30s Hollywood movie star —- rolling around on the bed and kind of begging for it. The scene has “erotic potential” written all over it, but in the end, it’s not that hot.
Though the Klimchak score is a little too “Exorcist”-like —- paranoid whisperings and bat-crazy blips —- Murphy’s idea of putting all the action upfront on those three big beds is to die for.
As dramaturg Sister Smith says so astutely in her notes, “Once a person is trapped in a downspiral of jealousy, voyeurism makes him an outsider, an audience, to his own marriage and desires.” And Dirden’s radical adaptation makes good sense and ought to be explored further, produced elsewhere.
Once again, Georgia Shakespeare puts on show that will attract a youthful audience who likes risky, adventurous drama, who believes theater needs to be as hypnotic, visually stimulating and urgent as cinema, who digs a really intense fight scene, who likes snazzy clothes.
I mean, when’s the last time you wanted to crawl in bed with a Shakespeare play?
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays. 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 5. $15-$40. Georgia Shakespeare, Conant Performing Arts Center, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-264-0020; www.gashakespeare.org
THE VERDICT: Bringing sexy back —- to the bard.
‘Glorious!’ @ Aurora Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C+
Florence Foster Jenkins was a musical legend —- both in her own time and her own mind. She was a diva to top all divas, an early 20th-century New York society dame innocent of talent and yet absolutely convinced that God had silver-coated her vocal cords.
That her vocalism was wretched was beside the point. She had all the affectations of an opera singer —- the vibrato, the flowing-arm movements, the dramatic swoops and rolling irises —- and just enough musicality to set up aural expectations and suddenly dash them to hilarious affect.
Audiences flocked to witness this phenomenon, this larger-than-life persona drenched in boas and homemade tinsel and fluff costumes to suit her repertoire. Whether audiences will similarly flock to see Peter Quilter’s comedic biographical play “Glorious!” at the Aurora Theatre is another question.
Certainly Madame Jenkins’ life as a performer cries out for stage realization, as do the perfumed salons and flower-strewn ballrooms in which she held forth before “lonely women and artistic men” —- all of whom she personally interviewed in her Manhattan hotel room before selling a ticket. No wonder she created a sensation when she finally appeared at Carnegie Hall in 1944 at the age of 76, selling out the house, turning some 2,000 disappointed fans away.
Quilter’s script is largely biographical, at times forcibly so, twisting the dialogue to set up some of Jenkins’ innocent real-life self-assessments (“I’m very similar to Frank Sinatra”), all delivered with effusive gusto by Shelly McCook in the starring role. The dramatis personae reflect Madame’s coterie of friends and colleagues, including her manager/boyfriend St. Clair, played with upper-crust aplomb by Bruce Taylor, and her obsequious accompanist Cosme (pronounced KOZ-may) McMoon, inhabited here with consummate effeminacy by Chris Ensweiler.
As the play opens, Cosme arrives at Madame’s apartment to audition to be her new accompanist. She hires him immediately, without hearing a single note, offers him a bourbon and declares them a team. He’s not so sure, but Madame is living proof of the power of positive thinking; Cosme becomes a dedicated follower and stays with her to the end.
So do St. Clair and Madame’s dear froufrou friend Dorothy, played by Marianne Fraulo with appropriate adoration. Dorothy also has a very, very old poodle, one of several ongoing gags in the play; another is Jenkins’ deadpan Spanish maid Maria (Denise Arribas), who appears periodically to offer mouthfuls of commentary in her native tongue —- usually in response to a request, in English, from Madame. Clearly this playwright has a fondness for un-PC stereotypes.
His one-liners —- especially Cosme’s double entendres —- grow tiresome after awhile. The actors’ tendency to pause before and after them, especially when they are quotes from the horses’ mouths, only makes things worse. We get the joke, thanks.
Still, Florence Foster Jenkins was riotously, if inadvertently, funny when she sang, and when McCook does the deed, she does it with admirable conviction —- just like her subject. The Aurora’s faithful subscribers clearly enjoyed themselves.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Through Nov. 5. $18-$25. Aurora Theatre Interim, Lawrenceville City Hall, 70 S. Clayton St., Lawrenceville. 678-407-6690. www.auroratheatre.com.
THE VERDICT: Amateurish, but fun.
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‘A Life in Theatre’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B+
At about 80 minutes of intermissionless dialogue between two male characters, David Mamet’s “A Life in the Theatre” is not an easy play —- on either side of the footlights.
A delicate duet between a seasoned actor and a novice, this new production at Theatre in the Square depicts the front- and backstage lives of two players in a somewhat run-down, presumably regional theater.
The seasoned actor, Robert, is a bit of a jerk, a kind of stereotypical self-centered minor-leaguer who lives, eats and breathes theater —- and little else. The novice, John, is far less passionate and so fills a need in Robert to pass on the “bug,” which pretty much manifests as a lot of pontificating.
Initially, John is an eager learner —- almost a groupie; Robert, insecure to a fault, revels in his adoration. But through the course of the play, the balance shifts, as John gains his footing in the field and adds a personal life to his professional one. His growth is Robert’s unraveling.
The pacing of their parallel but opposite progressions is crucial, and director John Stephens has hit it just right. Neal A. Ghant, who plays John, and Peter Thomasson, as Robert, respond to one another’s impulses as if intuitively.
Mamet has interwoven a series of “onstage” scenes with backstage ones. In the former, the actors face an imaginary audience, their backs to the real one. As that scene ends and/or cuts to black, the lights come up again on their backstage dressing room, where they change, get made up, eat Chinese food, read through (another) really bad script, and so on.
The onstage scenes —- a shipwreck, an English wartime drama, two surgeons in an operating room —- are often very funny and give these actors a chance to show off their skills as comic overachievers. Backstage, save for one very funny stuck zipper scene, is a different story altogether. Robert doles out advice or prattles on about the philosophical merits of a particular piece of dialogue; John grows increasingly disinterested.
“Don’t mock me,” Robert finally says to him as the tables begin to turn, “it’s too easy.”
Thomasson’s portrayal is a tour de force —- nuanced, poignant, insightful. Mamet’s trademark linguistic brilliance aside, Thomasson inhabits every facet of Robert, from professional to pompous to, in the end, pathetic.
Mimi Epstein’s sound design adds volumes in its own quiet way, with mostly acoustic piano between-scene snippets providing apt commentary on the preceding action. Set designer Jonathan Williamson finesses multiple offstage scenes with minimal means, and D. Patton White handles the soup-to-nuts costume array.
A challenge of play, well met.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 11. Also, 2:30 p.m. Nov. 8 and 12. $18-$33. Theatre in the Square Mainstage, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, www.theatreinthesquare.com.
THE VERDICT: Not an easy road, but one worth taking.
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Bulletin: ‘Jelly’s Last Jam’ sweeps Suzis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Jelly”s Last Jam” was on a roll at tonight’s just-ended Suzi Bass Awards at the 14th Street Playhouse in Midtown. The Alliance Theatre production picked up seven of the star-spangled silver trophies, while Georgia Shakespeare’s “Metamorphoses” made a splash with five Suzis.
The Alliance revival of George C. Wolfe’s musical biography of Jelly Roll Morton won best musical of the 2005-2006 season — as well as citations for directing (Kent Gash); choreography (Gash and Byron Easley); and musical direction (Darryl G. Ivey). “Jelly’s” also picked up three of the four awards for performances in a musical. (The fourth went to Geoff Uterhardt for outstanding featured actor in “Love Jerry” at Actor’s Express.)
“Metamorphoses” soaked up a handful of Suzis — including outstanding play of the season and best scenic design for Tim Conley, who installed a 25-foot-long swimming pool on the Georgia Shakes stage. Mary Zimmerman’s lovely adaptation of the myths of Ovid also scored for sound design (Clay Benning and Kendall Simpson); lighting design (Liz Lee and Mike Post) and outstanding ensemble.
The Suzis, named for a beloved Atlanta actress who died of melanoma a few years ago, ran like clockwork: 22 awards were handed out in about 90 minutes, and the playhouse was packed nearly to capacity with revelers in black tie and flowing gowns. That’s quite a jump over the four honors presented at the inaugural Suzis last year, and hopefully, it’s a sign that the Suzis are here to stay.
But for all its efficiency, the show was oddly lacking in drama, perhaps because so many of the winners were absent. Georgia Shakespeare’s Richard Garner was out of town, and several of his ensemble members were working Sunday night, at the theater’s new production of “Othello.” Gash was in Seattle directing the Intiman Theatre’s upcoming adaptation of “Native Son,” and not a single individual recipient for “Jelly’s” made it to the Suzis, although the parents of lead actor J.D. Goldblatt accepted graciously for their son.
But there was genuine gratitude and surprise throughout the night.
Dad’s Garage artistic director Kate Warner won the directing award for a play (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”). And after accepting for the ensemble of “Metamorphoses,” Carolyn Cook was back onstage to pick up the Suzi for best musical ensemble. This time it was for “Vive La Fontaine!”, by her French-speaking company, Theatre Du Reve. “This is just wrong,” Cook joked of her double whammy. Then, getting a bit emotional, the actress said, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” first in French, then English.
Kim Patrick Bitz, director of the Atlanta Coalition of Performing Arts, won the Spirit of Suzi Bass Award, following previous winners Kenny Leon and Karen Howell. Atlanta playwright Robert Earl Price was bestowed the Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award for “Come On In My Kitchen,” his riff on the myth of blues artist Robert Johnson, which had its world premiere at 7 Stages.
“It is something we deeply need,” Price said of the literary award, named after the founder of the Suzi Bass Awards, “and I am honored to be the first recipient.”
As the official “jokester” of the night, local comic Rob Cleveland managed to make inappropriate comments about the evening’s major nominees. He said that “Metamorphoses” featured the “annual sighting” of actor Daniel May in his birthday suit (only he didn’t use those words), and that “Love Jerry,” a controversial musical about pedophilia, was “a play that was pretty much endorsed by Mark Foley.”
“We can be just as catty and back-patting as New York and L.A.,” Cleveland said.
Here’s the full list of winners:
Featured actress, play: Suehyla El-Attar, “Bluish,” Alliance.
Featured actor, play: Ariel Shafir, “The Underpants,” Alliance.
Featured actress, musical: Lavon Fisher, “Jelly’s Last Jam,” Alliance.
Featured actor, musical: Geoff Uterhardt, “Love Jerry,” Actor’s Express.
Choreography: Kent Gash and Byron Easley, “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
Music direction: Darryl G. Ivey: “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
Scenic design: Tim Conley, “Metamorphoses,” Georgia Shakespeare.
Costume design: Mariann Verheyen, “Intimate Apparel,” Alliance.
Lighting design: Liz Lee and Mike Post, “Metamorphoses.”
Sound design: Tie between Paul Fallat, “Cotton Patch Gospel,” Theatrical Outfit, and Clay Benning and Kendall Simpson for “Metamorphoses.”
Director, play: Kate Warner, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Dad’s Garage.
Director, musical: Kent Gash, “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
Ensemble, play: “Metamorphoses.”
Ensemble, musical: “Vive La Fontaine!”, Theatre du Reve
Actress, play: Marianne Fraulo, “The Perfect Prayer,” Horizon Theatre.
Actress, musical: Karole Foreman, “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
Actor, play: Chris Kayser, “Twelfth Night,” Georgia Shakespeare.
Actor, musical: J.D. Goldblatt, “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
Production, play: “Metamorphoses.”
Production, musical: “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, Robert Earl Price, “Come on in My Kitchen,” 7 Stages.
Spirit of Suzi Bass Award, Kim Patrick Bitz, Atlanta Coalition of Performing Arts
‘Ghastly Dreadfuls’ at Center for Puppetry Arts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B. “The Ghastly Dreadfuls’ Compendium of Graveyard Tales and Other Curiosities”
Jon Ludwig and Jason von Hinezmeyer don’t need buckets of blood and fake cadavers to give you a chill.
“The Ghastly Dreadfuls’ Compendium of Graveyard Tales and Other Curiosities” —- their new spooky-season thriller at the Center for Puppetry Arts —- is a homage to the morbid splendor of 19th-century style horror, when creaking boards and mysterious graveyards had the power to suggest that there was something supernatural in the air.
Using a group of undead personalities called “dreadfuls” to present a series of music, dance and puppet vaudevilles, this cabaret-style evening dusts off classic thrillers by W.W. Jacobs and Mark Twain, unveils a handful of original tales and opens a gorgeously detailed curio cabinet of hand-made objects, outfits and (mostly) low-tech effects.
Among the things that go bump in the night are a jig by Spencer Stephens (aka Darkly Dreadful), set to the bone-rattlin’ tune “Mr. Ghost Goes to Town,” and the calypso-flavored ensemble piece, “Zombie Jamboree.”
But this is far from just a Halloween hootenanny. “Exotic Ghosts: The Creepy Compendium of International Ghouls From A to Z” is a superbly designed stop-action video by Kristin Jarvis that uses shadow puppets to unleash a virtual lexicon of frightening creatures from afar.
“The Ghost on the Trapeze” (by the company), “Le Danse Macabre” (set to Saint Saens) and Ludwig’s “The Deep End of the Pool” showcase the elegance of puppet designer von Hinezmeyer’s sculptural figures. (Von Hinezmeyer, by the way, portrays the skittish, Theremin-playing feline Catly Dreadful, while Ludwig is Simply Dreadful, the sniveling emcee in shredded Victorian formalwear.)
Jacobs’ “Three at Table,” in which a man lost in a snowstorm knocks on the door of an old woman’s lair, is among the most suspenseful of the tales —- with a menacing knife and a disfigured face worthy of “Dorian Gray.” But once the nasty business is out of the way, the story ends in reconciliation.
The most modern tale, adapted from Larry Letemplier’s “The Girl in the New Dress,” may be the most clever: a cartoon-style sequence employing rod puppets, cutouts and a scroll to unspool a Brian De Palma-meets-Alfred Hitchcock shocker. Russ Vick’s claustrophobic design is brilliant.
In parading such a range of material, “Ghastly Dreadfuls” sometimes feels a little cluttered, and the connecting commentaries a bit forced. But its sophisticated visual vocabulary, literary tone and overarching narrative conceit make it a true original. A smart Halloween show —- hey, that’s not dreadful at all.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays; 11 p.m. Oct. 28 only. Through Oct. 29. $18-$22. Center for Puppetry Arts, 1404 Spring St., Midtown. 404-873-3391; puppet.org. Recommended for ages 16 and up.
THE VERDICT: Tingly magic.
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‘The Light in the Piazza’ @ the Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B -
When we first spy Margaret Johnson, she is carrying a guidebook. All she needs to know about the statues and stories of Florence is neatly summed up here. What those pages don’t contain does is a map of the heart.
For the North Carolina matriarch at the center of “The Light in the Piazza,� which opened Tuesday night at the Fox Theatre, the journey really begins when her emotionally fragile daughter, Clara, falls under the spell of a courtly Italian youth named Fabrizio. There are no signs to tell the resourceful, well-dressed woman how to find her way through the byzantine alleyways of this complicated romance, or to navigate the blindspots of language, culture, religion and family that seem to lurk at every corner.
No va bene. This is not good, indeed.
But what Margaret and the other characters have on their side is music. In this luminous stage adaptation of Elizabeth Spencer’s 1960 novella, composer-lyricist Adam Guettel and book writer Craig Lucas don’t even try to solve love’s mystery. But they do offer a meditation on the tricky nature of light and clarity — and ponder the joy and rapture of yearning, the despair of loss, the essence of a thing that is deep and true.
Thanks to director Bartlett Sher and the Tony Award-winning design team of Michael Yeargan (sets), Christopher Akerlind (lighting) and Catherine Zuber (costumes), Florence makes safe passage to the Fox, which for a night becomes a charming collision of bicycles, flower carts, espresso cafes and, to Clara’s delight, naked statues.
Though the pacing of the first scene felt and sounded a little choppy on opening night, the Broadway Across America — Atlanta production soon found its balance, if not its magic.
As Margaret, Christine Andreas imbues her solos (“Dividing Day,� “The Beauty Is,� “Fable�) with an immeasurable loveliness that is all her own. In Margaret’s endless wardrobe of ’50-era suits and hats, Andreas’ peaches-and-cream complexion is about as pretty as it gets. The problem, and it pains to say this, is that her Southern accent is so gooey and coo-y that it it just doesn’t sound right, and because Margaret is the emotional core of the entire piece, the inauthenticity is not easy to overlook.
Elena Shaddow, for her part, finds the nuances of Clara’s confusion, while David Burnham’s sublime singing lends an operatic quality to Fabrizio that is as tender and touching as it is comic. Also good are the Latin-lothario shenanigans of Jonathan Hammond (as Fabrizio’s all-mocking brother, Giussepe); the Maggie-the-Cat posturing of Laura Griffith (as his wasp-waisted sister-in-law, Franca) and the Clarke Gable suaveness of David Ledingham (as Signor Naccarelli).
What redeems this story from being just another sunny Tuscan romance is its fragile tenor. As Fabrizio remarks, Clara hungers for surprise; the key is for Margaret to thirst for it, too. The inevitable thing about romance is that it doesn’t quench forever. Love is bittersweet. In that sense, this wondrously realized musical fairy tale gets it just right.
‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ @ Alliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Through Oct. 22. Grade: C+
Early on in “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” the character Vivie receives a high-spirited male visitor who is in awe of her lack of conventional primness. The year is 1894. Queen Victoria is still on the throne. But here, shockingly, is a young, unmarried woman with a skill for mathematics and a taste for cigars, whisky and detetective stories.
“You modern young ladies are splendid,” the guest roars. ” Perfectly splendid!”
Maybe so.
But the price of such modernity comes at high emotional cost for Vivie and her mother, Mrs. Warren, whose scandalous choice of profession buys her as much heartbreak and scorn as it does pretty clothes and elegant addresses. (George Bernard Shaw’s drama, in case you don’t know it, operates on Vivie’s discovery that Mrs. Warren runs a network of high-class brothels in European capitals.)
As played by Patricia Hodges in the Alliance Theatre production, Mrs. Warren lives in such fear of the lie she’s created that she can’t stop watching her back. In a fascinating character study, Hodges’ toweringly grotesque Mrs. Warren is a neck-swiveling, leather-chewing, money-counting ruin of a woman who alienates her daughter, then watches Vivie choose a path that’s just as self-deceiving and calculating as her mother’s.
For all the grand talk about Shaw’s feminism and socialism, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” — as written and played here — comes off as vague, dissatisfying and capricious.
For his third play, Shaw at once imitates Ibsen, his role model, and struggles to liberate himself from the Norwegian master’s staunchness. Shaw takes us on a stroll from the cozyness (and hypocrisy) of the English countryside to the harsh urbanity of the industrial age. As the outer world struggles between the romantic and the rational, so do his characters. Even the design of the play, so clumsily realized here by Michael Philippi, poses a debate between the freedom of nature and the order of civilization.
While you admire Susan V. Booth for attempting to stage this novel-posing-as-a-drama, the effect is lumbering and static. Annie Meisels is fine as long as she’s playing the perky and dismissive Vivie, but when devastation is required, she relies too much on the swallowing-back-queasiness approach. Her pain doesn’t feel nearly as genuine as her sarcasm.
As her suitor, Frank Gardner, Jason Loughlin is handsome and natural in his attack, and James Donadio, as the Rev. Samuel Gardner, is a welcome spot of comic relief — surprised to encounter his old acquaintance, Mrs. Warren, and so foggy with drink the morning after. Larry Paulsen makes for a florid Praed, and Peter Van Wagner an appropriately oily Sir George Crofts.
But there’s nothing particularly revelatory about any of the performances, except for Hodges’ — and hers is more a display of a character’s behavioral extremes. Here’s a woman who sucks every particle of energy out of a room and gives nothing in return. Mrs. Warren, in choosing a career that will buy her out of the Dickensian poverty of her youth, is crafty, vain and mercenary.
Linda Roethke’s period-perfect costumes are lovely but unremarkable. And Philippi’s set is as shamelessly schizophrenic as the play itself. Those green cardboard cutouts that stand in for the verdant English landscape are meager by Alliance standards, but wait until the fourth act. As Vivie shuts herself off from her mother’s maddening circle— and from love, perhaps— the effects are loud and operatic.
It brings to mind what St. Paul said about noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. And it’s a small payoff, a rude reminder, that this bitter, hard-to-produce Shavian night has finally come to an end.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. 7:30 p.m. Sundays. $15-$45. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center. 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000; alliancetheatre.org
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