Review of Born Yesterday at the Walnut Street Theatre

First published at Edge Philadelphia:

An old philosophy problem asks "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?"

Put the pair on stage and throw a woman between them and the answer is Garson Kanin’s comedy Born Yesterday, now in a very funny, if heavily caricatured production at the Walnut Street Theatre.

In Kanin’s 1946 classic, the ruthless scrap-metal magnate Harry Brock (Marco Verna) and his 100k-a-year lawyer Ed (David Hess) go to Washington. In the aftermath of WWII, Brock wants to corner the market on Europe’s scrap iron, and plans to bribe (if not outright bully) Senator Hedges (Greg Wood) to skirt the tariffs, regulations, and red tape that stand in the way.

But Brock runs headfirst into Paul Verrall (Darren Michael Hengst), an idealistic young reporter who still believes in the Constitutional underpinnings and principles of democracy even if everyone else in the nation’s capital suffers from "don’t care-ism." Initially disguising his plans in the form of a standard interview, Verrall really wants to expose the illegal activities fueling Brock’s corporation.

After the first meeting with the Senator and his wife (Susan Wilder), Brock’s idiotic chorus girl girlfriend Billie Dawn (Kate Fahrner) nearly kills the deal every time she opens her mouth, and if Brock’s going to succeed in "a town of respectable fronts," Ed suggests that he either dump her or marry her. The problem: to cover Brock’s illegal activity, the pair has bullied Billie into becoming the dummy head (literally) of most of his corporations, and he can’t give her the brush-off because "she owns more of him than he does." So the bull-headed industrialist suggests that Verrall tutors her, and in two months time, Billie’s crammed her hotel suite full of books, and traded her nasally voice for measured speech, her jazz for classical, and is thinking of trading in her irresistible capitalist for Verrall’s immovable idealism.

The Walnut’s production (and in fairness, Kanin’s play) accentuates the comedy (and tension) by relying heavily on caricatures: mobster-like businessmen clashing with fearless journalists, remorse-filled lawyers driven to drunken hobnobbing with pushover Senators, and a gun moll chorus girl delighted to be stupid so long as she has her two mink coats. And while the play’s clearly a poke at American-style corruption (in Italy, and elsewhere, the bribes really are commonplace), director Mark Clements steers clear of the class-envy and social commentary to find the straightforward laughs that Born Yesterday offers in abundance. Picture My Fair Lady meets Goodfellas, minus the showtunes and murders, and you get the idea.

And in every case but Verna’s, the caricatures hit their humorous targets. Fahrner’s simply adorable, both in her initial idiocy (who wouldn’t want to keep her around) and in her later change of heart, and Wood’s wincing reactions to her blunt outbursts mark some of the first act’s funnier moments. Hess’ drunken former District Attorney ably reflects the shifting moral balance on stage and in the audience, where even Brock’s bullying and later complaints of ingratitude found laughter and sympathy.

But while Hengst find the right balance of fearfulness and sincerity that backs up every set of untested ideals, Verna’s characterization is less interesting, and too big for the rest of the performances. In a voice that’s part Vito Corleone and part every role ever played by Al Pacino, Verna screeches his way through all of the play’s moments with a booming intensity that he never modulates. Sometimes, he’s funny, but it’s the lines he delivers ("there’s only one Mrs. Brock, and she’s dead") more than his acting that scores the laughter.

Todd Edward Ivins’ utterly magnificent hotel penthouse set recalls the grandeur of a more gilded age, where lush divans and dark wood relax the eyes even as (faux) marble columns shoot up to forty-foot ceilings and abut a spectacular windowed view looking down on the Capitol Building (and nicely representing the position Brock came to Washington to attain). In line with the caricatured characterizations, Colleen Grady bedecks Brock in forceful pinstriped suits (and a gorgeous cream colored coat), dresses Verrall in more humble plaids, and when Fahrner first walks onto the set, her gorgeous hair, makeup, and dress only completes the sense of 40’s era glamour that the Walnut’s production values create.

And as for who wins the age old question? As Verrall himself puts it, "the war leaves everything the same in DC."

Review of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Walnut Street

First published in Edge Philadelphia:

Sixty-two years ago, The Walnut Street Theatre staged the original production of Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire. Then starring a young Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy, the play shows the cultural clash of wills between Stanley Kowalski and Stanley’s sister-in-law Blanche Dubois as the latter invades his household and threatens the stability of his family life.

A fading Southern Belle who hides her alcoholism and creeping neurosis, Blanche (the almost too-beautiful-for-the-role Susan Riley Stevens) arrives at the home of Stella (Sandra Struthers) and Stanley (Jeffrey Coon) for a short "vacation" after being forced out of her job as an English schoolteacher for an indiscretion involving a 17-year old student. She still revels in the upbringing she received on the family’s plantation Belle Rêve (the beautiful dream), and condemns the life that her sister has forged with an uncouth, physically abusive working-class immigrant.

Stanley grates against her gentility and clashes with her from the start, initially over the loss of the family plantation (which affects his affairs as well). He doesn’t believe her stories about needing a break to "calm her nerves," and digs into her past to keep his old Army buddy Mitch (Scott Greer) from marrying her. When Stella challenges Stanley in defense of her sister, he explodes, shattering dishes, pounding walls, and punching his wife. And what Blanche doesn’t understand-that "there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark that make everything else seem unimportant"- ultimately makes Stella side with her husband, even after Stanley has violently attacked Blanche as well.

So much has changed in American culture’s judgments about relationships that I almost expect a director to stage Streetcar as a period piece. The post-WWII period still bound men and women into rigidly defined gender roles, ones where Stanley asks his wife "since when do you give me orders" and Stella defends her husband’s drinking with "people have to tolerate each other’s habits." And while Coon’s performance deftly showed a man defending his household against a woman threatening to wreck his home, I think it’s hard for an audience to accept Stella not only tolerating his abuse (even being turned on by it), but siding with him after what he does to Blanche (which I won’t spoil here).

But while the play still carries well (even over three hours), director Malcolm Black’s production strips the dark pathos that emanates from sexual desire and almost turns the play into a work more resembling a comedy of sexual manners. If Black can turn a moment of the script into a joke, he has his actors play for laughs, even in Blanche’s attempted seduction of a newspaper boy (which should stand as one of her more disturbing moments, not made humorous as if the play resembled an episode of TV’s Family Guy).

Moreover, between each scene, Black fills the street with gypsies, wandering singers and prostitutes. However, showing the street life of the quarter only diminishes the tragedy of all-consuming desire, making the action seem more like a tryst in Vegas, something brought about by the location rather than the pathologies of the characters in the play. And rather than let the audience silently absorb Stanley’s final act of violence, Black uses these interludes to divert attention to a fistfight in the street.

Consequently, the fine performances suffer, even though Stevens almost redeems every element of the pathos that drives the play in her last scene with Mitch. Coon fills his performance with great energy and employs a likeable charm that temporarily (and wonderfully) masks his wild animal movements, and his moments of explosive anger turn Paul Wonsek’ sharp set into the cage of Stanley’s animal nature.

Struthers’ straightforward portrayal of Stella removes any contemporary doubts as to why she’d stay with such a man; sitting curled up in a chair the morning after Stanley consummates his abuse with a night of sex, she looks ready to purr. And while Stevens’ early playing makes Blanche’s complaints seem reasonable (even though they stem mostly from her deluded fantasy of her upbringing), when her last veneer falls, Stevens gives a heart-wrenching glimpse into a destitute woman’s unfathomable decline into madness.

In trying to "save" her sister from what she sees as an unhealthy relationship, Blanche argues a contemporary and now common sentiment: "Maybe we are a long way from being made in God’s image, but we’ve made some progress since then" and men should now practice gentility and treat their women as equal companions. But I’d argue that we’ve lost something as a society when we can no longer understand a relationship like Stella and Stanley’s, one whose passion is fueled out of a woman’s (now rarely spoken) desire to be pulled down and conquered by a stronger, powerful man.

Even 61 years later, the strong performances in this play still provide a potent reminder that while the payoff we get in animal pleasure sometimes compensates for the pain we suffer for "hanging back with the brutes," it’s still human desire that clouds our "better" judgment.

Review of "O Captain, My Captain: Whitman's Lincoln" at Walnut Street Studio 3

First published in Edge Philadelphia:

At its best, theatre attempts to create another universe, no matter how big or small, drawing the audience into a world fashioned entirely by the production of a play or musical. Certainly, Bill Van Horn attempts this in his 90 minute piece O Captain, My Captain: Whitman’s Lincoln, where he plays "America’s poet" Walt Whitman.

Set designer Glen Sears has done his part, transforming the entire Studio 3 space into a late 19th Century parlor in Camden, a time capsule filled with enameled paintings, Victorian furniture (and lots of it; not a single member of the audience forced to sit in anything less!), neo-classical statues, and beautiful silver serving sets. On one side of the room hangs a framed portrait of Abraham Lincoln, facing him on the other wall, hangs a painting of Lincoln’s favorite actor and future assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Even the stage manager greets the patrons at the door in a high-necked gown (the more modern tattoo on her neck still visible though), an unseen "Mrs. Gilchrist" plays piano in an adjacent room, and a young serving girl (uncredited) hands out corn bread and lemonade to the audience. And when Van Horn bursts in as Whitman, costume designer Mary Folino has tailored him in a suit stolen straight out of one of the daguerreotype group "photos" adorning the walls.

We, Whitman tells the audience, are going to be part of his experiment, a preparation for an upcoming lecture tour, and the subject matter of the lecture is the same as the title: Whitman’s reflections on the life of Abraham Lincoln, from the time the former President attempted to enter politics in 1847, until his assassination in 1865. "I was there and saw everything," as they traveled the same roads and stayed in the same cities (when Whitman worked as a journalist), and later, when the poet lived in DC during the Civil War, sharing in the President’s aspirations for the fractured country.

Hopefully, everyone who grew up in America already knows some of Lincoln’s story, which Whitman punctuates with relevant sections of his poetry, intoning how he "yet shall mourn with ever returning spring" the death of a President that happened 22 years earlier and changed the spirit of the country.

But thankfully Whitman did not bring us to his brother’s house in Camden for a history lesson, either one to correct the falsehoods or lead us down familiar paths. Instead, he remarks what’s still true of today, that "All legends are basically true and America would much rather hear a good story than an accurate report."

Peppered with anecdotes, Van Horn’s play gives us a good tale, and in these little details, a new fascination for the familiar emerges. Whitman recounts the story of following the President’s corpse on its route from DC to Illinois for the burial. Making a stop in Philadelphia, thousands thronged 30th St. Station, and when the processional passed through town, a crowd hissed at the actor Edwin Forrest when he tried to apologize because one of his profession had committed the murder.

We also learn that Booth was Lincoln’s favorite actor, and that the President had earlier seen him in "The Apostate," a play in which Booth strode to the front of the stage and pointed straight at Lincoln when giving his speech denouncing a traitor. But unfortunately, these anecdotes (in which Booth prefigures heavily) provide the most interesting parts of the evening, and I wondered why I watched this piece here, at the Walnut Street, rather than slightly across town at the Constitution Center.

For while I get the story about Whitman’s love of Lincoln, very little gives me insight into Whitman himself, and hence, the play shows a speaker, but doesn’t offer a character (in a one-person performance, I can almost handle not getting a plot). Van Horn’s piece gives vague allusions about the poet, noting that he must live off the charity of family since his "latest misfortune," but those of us who don’t know the story of Whitman as well as we know Lincoln’s have to chew through this undercooked morsel of history. The piece, nonetheless, follows an interesting arc: Whitman did not initially vote for Lincoln, and didn’t vote at all in 1860, but yet came to admire the President.

As the poet, Van Horn holds the room throughout. He becomes bombastic when excited, and curls over like a wounded animal when finally mourning the President’s death, without ever dipping into the sugary waters of melodrama. Reciting several of Lincoln’s speeches verbatim, he delivers them with perhaps greater oratorical power than the President conveyed (I was certainly moved to belief).

But again, I wondered why I watched this on a stage and not in a lecture hall, classroom, or historical venue. And while it engrosses, even when Whitman meanders off topic, Van Horn’s piece isn’t so much a "stage-play" as a "staged event" or historical reenactment.

Historically, theatre finds its foundations in storytelling, one person under dim lights, assuming a variety of characters, spinning a tale to entrance an audience. I enjoyed Van Horn’s piece and performance immensely, even if by today’s standards of production and drama, it doesn’t so much create a universe of imagination, but tells a story that’s worth hearing.

Review of A Tuna Christmas at Walnut Street's Studio 3

First published in Edge Philadelphia, 12-10-2008:

To borrow a line from comedian Jeff Foxworthy: You know you’re a redneck if you’re hanging Christmas ornaments made from coffee filters and empty toilet paper rolls. Either that, or you’re appearing in Ed Howard, Joe Sears, and Jaston Williams’ A Tuna Christmas, now in production at the Walnut Street’s Studio Three.

After the Walnut Street’s successful production last year of the same authors’ Greater Tuna, director Madi Distefano recast John Zak and Benjamin Lloyd to play another 30 (or so) characters in Tuna, Texas, "the third smallest town in the state." A Tuna Christmas follows the struggles and foibles of the town’s backward residents during the Holiday season as they compete for the annual Christmas Yard Display Contest. For the last 15 years, the wealthy Vera Carp has won, and this year she’s hired Mexican immigrants to tend to the live animals in her holiday diorama.

If only they could fend off the "Christmas Phantom," a mysterious prankster who wrecks the lawn displays while causing the neighbors to accuse each other of perpetrating the mischief. Meanwhile, the town’s eccentric, "non-marrying type" (wink, wink) director Joe Bob Lipsey struggles to put on a production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol because an overzealous public utilities worker threatens to shut off the power unless he pays the theatre’s electric bill.

Distefano contemporizes the script’s humor with updates about the Walnut Street’s current production of Hairspray, Sarah Palin (of course), and a Christmas tree decorated to look like Dick Cheney "shot it in the face." The remaining jokes-and there’s plenty-mostly target the backwardness of life in the Deep South.

The play starts and ends at Radio OKKK, where advertisements for the local used-weapons store announce "if we can’t kill it, it’s immortal," and residents call to announce meetings of the anti-pornography group "Smut Snatchers." Local high-school girls wear the hot-selling perfume "Compromise," and townspeople threaten Tuna’s lone liberal citizen," by telling him that they "shoot vegetarians on sight." So much for being done with rednecks from Texas.

A Tuna Christmas affectionately satirizes Southern life, and any theatergoer will delight hearing Lipsey complain about his "all-white" production of "A Raisin in the Sun," or celebrate his innovative recasting of the Greek tragedy "Medea" into a Confederate triumph. And those who love well-crafted performances will find much to enjoy in Zak and Lloyd’s superb performances.

The pair run on and off the stage, and with little more than a wig and costume change, manage to seamlessly and hilariously inhabit an entire town’s worth of characters. Zak’s radio announcer sports a Roy Orbison bouffant, and Lloyd, tucked inside a "fat suit," is possibly the nastiest looking housewife in Texas-or anywhere. And the choice for Zak to play the town’s lone liberal as mentally challenged shows a subtle and interesting commentary on the South’s perverted understanding of Blue-State values.

Costume designer Alisa Sikora-Kleckner finds endless variations on the theme of "Wal-Mart chic," contrasting John Deere pajamas with a one-piece satin jumper that makes even the town’s wealthy resident look like white trash. Meghan Jones’ adorns her functional set with ratty props (including a mounted Jackalope!), Shon Causer’s lighting helps sharpen the rough transitions in locales, and Christopher Colucci’s vivid sound design paints in the backdrop of southern life.

However, even the design team’s potent atmosphere can’t ward off the dead moments in the production. Distefano tries to enliven these with rock music and dancing or pesky grandmothers firing slingshots at birds, but the overkill of jokes means that some of the script will just not sound funny. Too many ancillary characters complicate the plot without adding a compensating humor for the distraction, and while I enjoyed Zak and Lloyd’s versatility, the final moments spent reminiscing left me bored.

Howard, Sears, and Williams have written a third installment to their Tuna series. Despite the changes in Washington, chances are Philadelphia audiences will get to laugh at rednecks from Texas for at least one more year.

The Independence Studio on Three at the Walnut Street Theatre presents A Tuna Christmas until Jan. 4. Tickets and more information available at: http://www.walnutstreettheatre.org/season/tunaxmas.php