Access Atlanta > Arts > Our Reviews > Archives > 2005 > September > 22 > Entry
‘Moonlight’ over Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “Moonlight and Magnolias.” Alliance Theatre. Through Oct. 9
He’s already filmed the burning of Atlanta, but the birthing of Melanie’s baby will have to wait.
Halfway into the making of “Gone With the Wind,� producer David O. Selznick has fired his director and doesn’t have a workable script for Margaret Mitchell’s rhapsodically celebrated, 1,037-page epic, “Gone With the Wind.� Uh-oh. Time for a rewrite.
This is the premise of “Moonlight and Magnolias,� Ron Hutchinson’s loosely factual account of Selznick’s frenetic battle to get the tale of Scarlett and Rhett sealed in celluloid. And where better to deliver this delirious backstage romp than the Alliance Theatre, in the city where The Movie premiered and just a few blocks from the Peachtree Street apartment where Mitchell wrote The Novel.
If you are a Hollywood trivia buff or a lover of “GWTW� lore, the behind-the-scenes send-up of the dictatorial Selznick (Thomas Sadoski), cynical script doctor Ben Hecht (David Pittu), newly appointed director Victor Fleming (Kevin O’Rourke) and dutiful secretary Miss Poppenghul (Tess Malis Kincaid) is a play after your own heart.
But for a riff on the troubles of script-writing, Hutchinson’s play has its own set of issues, including a split personality to rival any honey-dripping Southern harlot.
For the record, it also has some rather delicious gossip.
Any story that hints at Clarke Gable’s indiscretions with George Cukor (the movie’s original director) and has a little fun with Margaret Mitchell’s control issues (square pillars for Tara, or else!) is more than likely to get a few laughs in the town that spawned the hoopskirt hoopla.
It’s true that Selznick turned to Hecht out of desperation. As the story goes, the producer went through a reputed 17 writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald (“He gave me two lines I could use!� Selznick snorts in the play) and Sidney Howard, who gets official credit. It’s true that he snagged Fleming from “The Wizard of Oz� after firing Cukor — and that he held Fleming and Hecht under a kind of house-arrest, force-feeding them peanuts and bananas, until they gagged up a screenplay.
Hutchinson fills in the gaps with adrenaline-stoked dialogue, Marx Brothers slapstick, jokes about Vivien Leigh and Judy Garland, and diversions about Selznick’s insecurities. Son-in-law of film mogul Louis B. Mayer, Selznick was obsessed with making a hit, but also haunted by his producer father’s failure. He was caught between satisfying mainstream taste and remaining true to the lustrous standards of Golden Age Hollywood.
Sounds like more than enough tension to drive a screwball comedy.
But Hutchinson seems bent on making political statements, too. So while Selznick imitates Scarlett, and Fleming pretends to be both Melanie and Prissy (which is quite funny in the baby-birthing fracas), Selznick has to fend off the PC goadings of Hecht as well. No doubt Hecht was a card-carrying liberal who cared about the treatment of blacks and Jews. But the Jewish self-loathing routine confuses the tone and nearly derails the show’s comedic engine.
This is no fault of the actors.
Sadoski captures the vast charm, and the megalomania, of the forever-conflicted Selznick. Pittu makes Hecht, who’d never read the book, into a wiry pit bull and Hollywood poet. (In real life, Hecht wrote “The Front Page� and co-authored “Twentieth Century,� which is now playing at Georgia Ensemble Theatre.) And O’Rourke invests Fleming with the cuddly gruffness of a large Teddy bear.
But in the much smaller role of the secretary, Kincaid misses an opportunity to quirk it up and toy around with her signature line, “Yes, Mr. Selznick.� That’s a device that’s designed for serious clowning — think of how Carol Channing or Margo Skinner, the late actress who originated the part, might have played it.
Santo Loquasto’s wood-paneled, wall-papered set is pretty, but the script seems to call more for Deco glamour than Victorian fussiness. Mitchell, however, would have appreciated Jane Greenwood’s sartorial correctness. (Now that I think about it, there’s something Mitchell-like about Poppenghul’s unerring devotion to decorum.)
Ultimately, there’s no harm done by this crowd-pleasing production, which the Alliance imported from Manhattan Theatre Club with an all-new cast. But there’s not much difference in the way Selznick consciously put the mediocre “GWTW� over on the hungry public, and the way the Alliance wants to cash in on our endless fascination with all things Scarlett.
Fiddle-dee-dee. If, to paraphrase Miss O’Hara, you’ve never gotten so tired of any four words in your life than “Gone With the Wind,� you can always go in the house and shut the door. For tomorrow is another play. THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays; 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 9. $15-$45. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000; alliancetheatre.org.
Verdict: “GWTW� farce has its moments.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
