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‘Ballyhoo’ wields skewer with love
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
Alfred Uhry’s “The Last Night of Ballyhoo” may have been written in 1996 for the Olympic Arts Festival. But it feels like a ’40s masterpiece, as if the Atlanta-born playwright were channeling the ghosts of Tennessee Williams and Clifford Odets.
When Brooklyn newcomer Joe Farkas steps into a Habersham Road mansion all decorated for Christmas, he can barely believe that its inhabitants are Jewish. It’s 1939. Hitler is marching on Germany. But the only thing on the mind of Scarlett O’Hara wannabe Lala Levy is getting a glimpse of the world premiere of “Gone With the Wind” — and a date for the Jewish society ball called Ballyhoo.
The genius of this play, which Georgia Ensemble Theatre has revived in all its magnificence, is Uhry’s delicate blending of two of the great traditions of American literature.
With the one hand, he stacks all the elements of an outsize Southern Gothic tale: hysterical females, gentleman callers and ghosts of dearly departed husbands and fathers. With the other, he quietly introduces an Arthur Miller-style Yankee liberal who will expose the anti-Semitism that festers in this clan of German Jews.
It takes a master to stitch such a raucously colorful quilt on such a solid moral warp. It also helps that director Robert J. Farley and his team have immersed themselves so fully and joyfully in the details. Farley, in case you don’t recall, is the guy who brought “Driving Miss Daisy” to the Alliance Theatre, where it ran for almost two years in the ’90s, so he has a connection with Uhry that’s deep and historic.
Though this Roswell theater often feels too much like a municipal auditorium, Jamie Bullins designs his scenery on such a scale that it fools you. The house, and some of Erik Teague’s costumes, almost threaten to become characters.
As for the cast, Mary Lynn Owen is fantastic as the much-agitated Boo Levy, who lives with her social outcast daughter, Lala (Cara Mantella); her brother, Adolph (Mark Kincaid); and widowed sister-in-law, Reba (Marianne Fraulo). As high-strung Lala, Mantella is wildly, over-the-top expressive. How in the world does she make her pretty face so horsey and lugubrious? So arch? Mantella is a bigger presence, even, than the bubbly Megan Hayes, who plays Lala’s rival cousin, Sunny Freitag.
At one point, Lala accuses Sunny of stealing the spotlight at her father’s wake. “That was supposed to be my tragedy,” she huffs. As funny as that is, it speaks volumes about this family’s essential sadness, born of so many years of pettiness, insecurity and ineffectuality.
But the darkest stain on this lot is their disdain for “the other kind” — that’s code for Orthodox, Eastern-European Jews. Because Farkas can never be a member of their club, tension escalates.
As Farkas, Tony Larkin cuts an elegant figure, but his Brooklyn accent and posturing feel outmoded and noirish. Fortunately, Eric Mendenhall finds comedic gold in Lala’s love interest, Peachy Weil. After so much meddling, Boo and Lala get what they deserve: red hair, obnoxious jokes and all.
In “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” Uhry continues his love affair with a city whose complex manners, now and then, are often concealed by eccentric characters and ridiculous behavior. For all their foibles, the Freitags and Levys wield considerable charm. By the end of the night, they are redeemed by laughter and love.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays; 4 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. March 7. Through March 11. $17-$33. Georgia Ensemble Theatre, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. 770-641-1260, get.org.
THE VERDICT: A terrific twist on the Southern Gothic comedy.
Comments
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By theater gal
March 1, 2007 9:05 AM | Link to this
I think that your critic and I saw different “Last Night”s at the Georgia Ensemble. The play I saw was unfunny and grating, with pat sentimentality and moralism and an utterly trite, stitched-on ending that ran counter to the rest of the play. The cast, with the exception of Mark Kincaid’s Adolph, was tiresome and unconvincing. The audience gave a half-hearted round of applause at the end, with one bow and out for the cast adn a quick exit for everyone else.
I’m all for supporting regional theater, which is why I went to the play in the first place, but I don’t think you help improve the quality and enthusiasm of companies and audiences with overly optimistic reviews.