A Primitive Pleasure?
⊆ April 29th, 2006 by courtney | ˜By Fiona Zublin
The Play’s The Thing
Farces are renowned as complicated, temperamental creatures, often long and filled with chase scenes and slapstick. They generally follow a formula: setting up an unsolvable problem, inventing a viable solution, and watching the solution fail but the happy ending miraculously happen anyway. The Play’s the Thing, a P.G. Wodehouse adaptation of Ferenc Molnar’s A Play at the Castle now playing at Washington Stage Guild, is at once refined and primitive, hailing from a seemingly simpler time when farces needed three acts and no plot twists.
The play is, of course, about theater people. Molnar (via Wodehouse) wastes no time, but gets straight to he witty self comment, allowing one of his characters to complain about how difficult it is to begin a play. We have Sandor (Bill Largess) and Mansky (Lawrence Redmond), a playwriting team who are shepherding their new composer, sweet Albert (an adorable, fluttery Chris Davenport) to rendezvous with his fiancee, prima donna Ilona (Jennifer Timberlake.) Unfortunately, the three of them overhear Ilona and her ex-lover Almady (Conrad Feininger) in what might be called a passionate exchange.
Act one sets up the problem, act two presents a solution, and in act three—the ending is so expected that it is unexpected, merely because this is farce and we expect myriad plot twists. This is a bubble of a play, light and sweet, directed with class by John MacDonald. But oh, there is something just a little disappointing in it, a feeling of “that’s it?” that dampens the final applause. MacDonald handles several difficult passages adroitly, including a long exchange of offstage dialogue while the stage we see remains empty. The fact that he can engage our brains even when our eyes have nowhere to go is a testament to his skill. The actors give generally hammed-up but endearing performances, and the script is so cleverly aware of itself as a play that the over-the-top performances seem right at home.
As everyone knows, the most important part of any P.G. Wodehouse story is the butler—and thank god, there is a butler in this story. Dwornitschek (Jeff Baker) is a sort of proto-Jeeves; he has the same placidity but not the benevolent ability to manipulate. His constant smile and reserved affability endear him to us without ever letting us know what he’s thinking. Unfortunately, Wodehouse can’t decide who’s the puppetmaster of the evening: Sandor and Dwornitschek both take on godlike qualities, and it divides our loyalties and faith.
