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‘Nerd’ terrorizes Duluth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The Nerd.” Aurora Theatre, Duluth. Through Oct. 23.
Nerds can really get on your nerves. Social rejects with dorky glasses, nasal monotones and disgusting eating habits, they’re usually the first to arrive at parties and the last to leave. Nerds!
Clark Kent and Elvis Costello may be the bespectacled exceptions to the stereotype, but Larry Shue’s “The Nerd” isn’t about a buff superhero or a suave pop star. No, sir-ee. Shue’s Rick Steadman is a Wisconsin goof-wad who inspects chalk (“choolk”) for a living, gets toilet paper stuck to his shoe and does the most inappropriate things. He looks up skirts. He proposes to an 8-year-old when he’s 30. He licks the filling out of deviled eggs before returning the empties to the table. G-ross.
Now playing at Duluth’s Aurora Theatre, “The Nerd” is the comic bookend to Shue’s “The Foreigner,” another farce that sets up an assemblage of quirky house-guests, rearranged identities and role reversals as a countdown for fewer than six silly degrees of separation.
First produced in 1981 and feeling slightly dated, “The Nerd” uses a telephone answering machine to call in plot twists, has an “Amityville Horror” punch line and even works in an Archie Bunker-ism (“meathead”). Matt Huff’s direction makes the machinations of the first act slower than necessary, but the cast of crack comedians dances around the script’s rough edges with the fancy footwork of hokeypokey contestants gone wild.
Here’s the gist: Architect Willum Cubbert (Chris Williams) is designing a hotel for one Warnock Waldgrave (Barry L. Anbinder), whose nervous wife, Clelia (Johanna Linden), keeps a tiny hammer in her purse so she can crack crockery as a way of letting off steam. As soon as we meet her enfant terrible, Thor (Aaron Hardy), we see why she’s in pieces.
But the wacky Waldgraves are just the beginning of Willum’s woes. His potential girlfriend, Tansy McGinnis (Claire Bronson), is leaving Terre Haute to be a “Washington weather girl” —- she’s going to make it, after all —-and his acerbic friend Axel Hammond (Scott Poythress) is a bored drama critic who entertains himself by rearranging the dramatis personae in his life.
Enter adenoidal Rick (Chris Ensweiler), who crashes the party in a monster’s costume, even though Halloween has already come and gone. Though the titular nerd saved Willum’s life in Vietnam, it was such a close call that Willum has no memory of it. (Ah-hem.)
Always a game clown, Ensweiler basks in his character’s moronic behavior —- and gets terrific payoff from underplaying the nonsense. The geek’s companions may be horrified by the way he hijacks the action, but the audience is tickled by every stealthy gesture. I don’t know another actor who can make me laugh out loud by merely wrinkling his nose, pursing his lips or slurping a strand of spaghetti.
With the nerd in the punch bowl, the so-called normal types go nuts; the joy of these performances is the way they flit between delicate equilibrium and gnawing anxiety. The ensemble exists to support the nerd, but it’s a showcase of clever acting, too.
Linden’s twitchy Clelia chews her lip to great effect. Poythress’ Axel mutters smarmy comments to himself. Anbinder’s Waldgrave takes it all in, then snarls like a wolf. Bronson’s Tansy flutters like Mary Tyler Moore. Finally, even grateful Willum (Williams) loses his grip. (Williams gives a performance that’s more sturdy than stellar. But it’s especially entertaining to watch Linden’s and Anbinder’s characters reach the tipping point, and to hear in Bronson’s voice the miraculous commingling of panic and musicality.)
Shue and his dunce place us in the middle of polite society run amok. In the end, the audience is delighted to be in on the conspiracy. I mean, come on: I have a deviled egg fetish, don’t you?
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Through Oct. 23. $18-$25. Aurora Theatre, 3087-B Main St., Duluth. 770-476-7926, www.auroratheatre.com.
THE VERDICT: A confederacy of dunces.
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