A CurtainUp Review
Present Laughter
By Elyse Sommer
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If you want to be a playwright. . .go and get yourself a job as a
butler in a repertory company, if they'll have you. Learn from the ground up how plays are constructed and
what is actable and what is not. Then sit down and write at least twenty plays one after the other,
and if you can manage to get the twenty-first produced for a Sunday night performance, you'll be
damned lucky! — Garry Essendine to the aspiring playwright Roland Maule. But, for all his silliness, Maule gives as good as he gets; to wit his telling Essendine "All you do with your talent is to wear dressing-gowns and make witty remarks, where you might be really helping people, making them think, making them feel." |
Lisa Banes and Victor Garber
(Photo: Joan Marcus) |
As Coward's longtime friend and biographer Graham Payn put it: "Garry Essendine is Noel, right down to the last Sulka dressing gown." But the no longer young, vain matinee idol role has also been a terrific vehicle for actors of a certain age.
The last actor to make the most of the always on central character was Frank Langella in 1997. Now its Victor Garber's turn to don Essendine's elegant robes —not to mention silk pajamas and a black velvet smoking jacket (if they still make those, I think I'll get one for my hard to gift husband's next birthday even though our apartment though it has an art deco lobby hardly matches the splendor of Essendine's digs).
Garber is a seasoned stage actor, who's appeared in many plays (he was the first Serge in Yasmina Reza's much produced comedy Art) and musicals (Damn Yankees, Sweeney Todd) . But his job as a counter spy in the TV series Alias, as well as films like Milk, have kept him too busy to do more than to firm up his acting and singing muscles with short run shows like the 4-day Encores! revivals (Of Thee I Sing). So it's nice to have him back on Broadway.
The silver-haired Garber looks great in whatever he wears. His English accent is authentic and consistent. His outbursts of often ridiculous despair are delivered with an easy Cowardian flourish. No problem with his being 55 instead of the 45 specified by Coward. After all 60 has become the new 40, especially with Viagra to make the bigger age gap between Essendine and his casual sleepover dates less of a performance problem. In fact this Garry's age is a chance to underscore the underlying poignancy of aging and the futility of life that could be seen hiding beneath Coward's most frivolous comedies, including this perennial crowd pleaser.
Like so many Roundabout revivals that take us back to another, more glamorous world, this Present Laughter is elegantly staged. When the curtain rises (as it does at the American Airlines Theater, unlike so many of today's curtain-less stages), it's on a drop dead set — in this case a duplex by Alexander Dodge that's a cross between the art deco lobbies at Radio City Music Hall and the Edison Hotel. That set is like an inanimate diva and it gets a well-deserved round of applause. However, that applause-getting set makes Garber's entrance at the top of a gorgeous curved stairway a bit like that of a second banana.
It's this almost too spectacular, star upstaging set that best explains why this production isn't quite as funny and scintillating as one expects a Noel Coward comedy to be: Garber is a perfectly charming, amusing and Coward-like Essendine who's at his best when he ironically pleads with others to "for the love of God, stop being theatrical!" But he's a tad short of razzle dazzle flamboyance. The same is true of the rest of the cast. All but one (more on that in a moment) are excellent and deliver their allotted witticisms with solid timing; but, like the star around whom they revolve, they don't sparkle quite enough for the laughter in this Present Laughter to be more now and then than always present.
The plot which Coward himself admitted was mostly a series of "pyrotechnics" concocted to amusingly mirror himself. Those pyrotechnics take place over the course of a week preceding Garry's scheduled African tour. Complications involve the two latest women who pursue him —-Daphne (Holley Fain) a wanna be thespian socialite, Joanna (Pamela Jane Gray), who's married to his business partner Henry (Richard Poe) and mistress to his other business partner Morris (Marc Vietor). Trying to make him act the age he doesn't like to admit to is his wife Liz (Lisa Banes) who has remained his friend even though they've lived apart for years.
To keep things running smoothly there's Monica (Harriet Harris), the devoted secretary he describes as "churning through life like some frightening old warship." The farcical complications preceding Garry's departure keep people popping up at the apartent's front door, appearing and disappearing through the doors of the spare room and the office. Also adding comic relief are Fred (James Joseph O'Neil), the butler, and a chain smoking Scandanavian maid (Nancy E. Carroll).
Garber's singing a Coward song at the top of the second act is fun and director Martin has smartly doubled that fun with a musical encore. But to get back to that one less than commendable performance, there's Martin's misdirection of yet another invader into Garry's sumptuously designed world, an untalented playwright named Roland Maule (Brookes Ashmanskas). This character's obsessive nature invites exaggerated performance, but Martin has allowed, and probably encouraged, Ashmanskas to play the role in a way that borders on the bizarre. Some of his shtick is funny, and given the many slow spots in this production, Maule's outrageous behavior is something of needed as a pickup. Besides, he does get one of the play's funnier retorts when he tells Garry "All you do with your talent is to wear dressing-gowns and make witty remarks, where you might be really helping people, making them think, making them feel." On the other hand as a Coward devotee once told me "what's so insignificant about wit and laughter in an age weighed down by significant issues?"
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Present Laughter by Noel Coward Directed by Nicholas Martin Cast: Victor Garber (Garry Essendine), Brooks Ashmanskas (Roland Maule), Lisa Banes (Liz Essendine), Nancy E. Carroll (Miss Erikson), Alice Duffy (Lady Saltburn), Holley Fain (Daphne Stillington), Pamela Jane Gray (Joanna Lyppiatt), James Joseph O'Neil (Fred), Richard Poe (Henry Lyppiatt), Marc Vietor (Morris Dixon) and Harriet Harris (Monica Reed). Sets: Alexander Dodge Costumes: Jane Greenwood Lighting: Rui Rita Sound: Drew Levy Hair and wig design: Tom Watson Dialect coach: Deborah Hecht Stage Manager: Stephen M. Kaus From 1/02/10; opening 1/21/10; closing 3/21/10 Running Time 2 hours 30 minutes including 2 intermissions. American Airlines Theatre 227 West 42nd St (212) 719-1300 Tuesday - Saturday @8pm; Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday @2pm. Tickets, $66.50 - $116.50 Reviewed by Elyse Sommer 1/25/10 press opening |
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