| Stranger
Than Hollywood
by
Terry Teachout
I've
been spending to much time in Manhattan aisle seats that I almost
forgot there was life beyond the Hudson River. To recapture my sense
of perspective, I took a train to Washington, home of The Arena
Stage, a well-regarded regional theater-in-the-round that launched
it's new season last Friday with the world premiere of Ken Ludwig's
"Shakespeare in Hollywood" a noisy, funny, thoroughly
agreeable play about what happens when two of the Bard's best-known
characters take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and find themselves
stuck on a soundstage.
"Shakespeare
in Hollywood" which runs through Oct.19, is based on a real-life
event that in retrospect seems almost as comically implausible as
Mr. Ludwig's script. In 1934, Max Reinhardt brought a lavish staging
of "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" to the Hollywood Bowl.
Jack Warner, of all people, got the idea of hiring the German emigre
director to make a big-budget film version for Warner Brothers starring
Olivia de Havilland as Hermia, Dick Powell as Lysander, Jimmy Cagney
as Bottom and Mickey Rooney as Puck. Released the following year,
it took 6 months to make and cost a whopping 1.5mil (19.4 in 2002
dollars).
Mr.
Ludwig, the author of "Lend Me a Tenor", has used that
fantastic event as the pretext for an even more fantastic backstage
comedy in which Oberon (Casey Biggs) Shakespeare's King of
the Fairies and Puck (Emily Donahoe) his jester and general factotum,
get their spells crossed and are transported to the set of Reinhardt's
film, on which the hijinks are already well under way. Among other
things, Jack Warner (Rick Foucheux) is sleeping with one of the
leading ladies, the brassy Lydia Lansing (Alice Ripley, who sounds
just like Jean Hagen in "Singin' in the Rain") and Will
Hayes (Everett Quinton), Hollywood's censor-in-chief, has decided
that Shakespeare's original play is too racy and needs trimming.
Meanwhile, Max Reinhardt (Robert Prosky) has learned that his Oberon
and Puck are indisposed and must find replacements at once so he
can start shooting. Who better than the confused but obliging time
travellers who suddenly materialize on set, already in costume?
Mr.
Ludwig specializes in farce, the theatrical genre in which a Basil
Fawlty type blowhard gets his comeuppance through the near-mathematical
convergence of wildly unlikely coincidences that reduce him to abject
humiliation. Perfected by George Feydeau, classic farce relies on
rapid-fire, precisely timed coming and goings of characters who
come within inches of catching one another with their pants down.
(Any play whose set contains three doors is probably a farce.) Here,
Will Hayes is the blowhard and Oberon and Puck contrive to put him
on the spot by means of magical skullduggery. This being a farce,
suffice it to say that things go wrong, then wronger, then wronger
still, until the stage his crammed full of hair-tearing actors at
their collective wit's end.
Pure
farce has never been as popular in this country as it is in Europe.
It is, after all, a peculiarly hopeless kind of comedy, one in which
the dignified victim learns nothing from his elaborately prepared
Calvary of embarrassment, and Americans are too optimistic by nature
to warm to such cruel fun. Mr. Ludwig knows what to do with a slamming
door, but he also knows his audiences, which is why he stirs a cupful
of all-American sentiment into his oh-so-European situations. In
"Shakespeare in Hollywood", for example, Oberon falls
in love with Olivia (Maggie Lacey), a fresh faced actress who just
got off the bus from Iowa, thus putting himself in an impossible
situation. How dare the King of the Fairies make whoopee with a
mere mortal, even if she is a starlet?
If
you like your farce served up cold with plenty of vinegar on the
side, Mr. Ludwig's warmed-up, semi-sweet version of the Feydeau
recipe will doubtless leave you boiling mad. Put aside your preconceptions,
though, and "Shakespeare in Hollywood" will charm your
socks off, not least because of the delightful performances of its
stars. Maggie Lacey, who made her Broadway debut last year playing
opposite Paul Newman in "Our Town", is adorable as Olivia,
the wise-cracking screwball-comedy dame who secretly longs for love.
Emily Donahoe is the most winsome Puck imaginable, while Casey
Biggs's Oberon is at once regal and engaging, as befits an Americanized
king.
To
be sure, the cast, like the play itself, is not without it's weak
links. Robert Prosky is wane and tired as Max Reinhardt, and Everett
Quniton's camped-up Will Hays is all wrong and a yard wide. Nor
has sufficient care been taken to make the Hollywood caricatures
convincing: David Fendig looks and sounds nothing like Dick Powell,
and Adam Richman isn't much better as Jimmy Cagney. Kyle Donnelly's
million-decibel direction, effective enough in it's own right, inevitably
suffers from the use of an arena stage with minimal scenery. Not
only does this kind of comedy need a proscenium arch to focus the
frenzied energies of it's players, but how can you mount a proper
production of a farce in a set with no doors?
Fortunately,
these are mere quibbles that need not get in the way of your having
an uncomplicatedly good time. "Shakespeare in Hollywood"
is no "Midsummer's Night's Dream," but it is sweet, light
and surprisingly tender, and it left me smiling in my Amtrack aisle
seat all the way home to New York. |
