Amanda Walker’s absolutely fabulous Mame Dennis and Lauren Mayfield’s hilariously scene-stealing Agnes Gooch are the best reasons to catch Inland Valley Repertory Theatre’s big-stage revival of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s 1955 Broadway smash Auntie Mame, that and the chance to see where its hit Hollywood screen adaptation and the Jerry Herman musical gem Mame got their start.

It was novelist Patrick Dennis who began it all sixty-four years ago when he wrote Auntie Mame: An irreverent escapade, the fictionalized adventures of poor little orphaned rich boy Patrick (Andrew Bar at IVRT), sent by trustee Dwight Babcock (John Nisbitt) to live with his father’s eccentric 30something sister Mame.

Accompanied by sure-and-begorrah Irish nurse Norah Mudoon (Candace Elder), the unsuspecting duo arrive at the madcap bohemian hostess-with-the-mostes’s Beekman Place apartment mid-nightly cocktail soiree and are promptly thrown into the The Roaring Twenties at their roaringest.

Chief among Mame’s eccentric entourage are her best freneny, the ever inebriated Broadway megastar Vera Charles (Tiffany Berg McMahon), her publisher beau Lindsay Woolsey (George Walters), and the household’s Japanese manservant Ito (Hisato Maruyama).

1929’s Stock Market Crash means a succession of disastrous odd jobs for the previously comfortably-off Mame, including a jewelry-jangling stage appearance opposite Vera, a switchboard-operating stint at Widdicome, Gutterman, Applewhite, Bibberman and Black, and roller skate saleslady gig (C.O.D. only if you please) at Macy’s, until a trip down Georgia way has her winning the heart of plantation owner Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside (Steve Siegel).

All is not Moonlight and Magnolias, however, most notably where nephew Patrick is concerned, and never more so than when boy becomes man and Mame’s formerly obedient, adoring nephew (Taylor Bjur as Adult Patrick) begins to display every parent’s (or guardian aunt’s) worst nightmare, the serpent’s tooth of a thankless child.

Additional featured characters include Southern battleaxe Mother Burnside (Pamela Lambert) and Georgia bitch Sally Cato McDougal (Gabrielle Richardson), snooty debutante Gloria Upson (Caroline Crawford Johnson) and her equally uppity parents Doris (Leslie Thompson) and Claude (Michael Buczynski), ghost writer Brian O’Bannion (Mitchell Burke), jill-of-all-trades Pegeen Ryan (Kianna Bjur), and above all Agnes Gooch, Mame’s dowdy secretary who (unlike her much-Mame The Musical reincarnation), makes us wait till Act Three to show up and steal the show.

Having helmed IVRT’s Born Yesterday a few years back, director Kevin Slay knows his way around Broadway comedy classics, and in leading lady Walker, he has found a Mame any professional production would be proud to trumpet as its own, investing the role with elegance, vivacity, glamour, sex-appeal, and heart.

Bar, Bjur and Bjur, Burke, Elder, Lambert, McMahon, Johnson, Nisbit, Richardson, Siegel, Thompson, and Waters provide lively support, with special snaps to Masuyama for taking Ito from racial stereotype to erudite Asian-American.

Most of all, it’s Mayfield’s wild and wacky tribute to Gooch-originator Peggy Cass (and Cass’s distinctive gravely whine of a voice) that takes Act Three to a whole new level and makes you wish she’d been written in from the start.

Ariel Buczynski, Logan Carry, Cindi East, Thomas Fisk, Ian Ho, Seth Johnson, Laura Richie, Gary Roberts, and Nathaniel Vogel complete the cast of twenty-seven in assorted enthusiastic cameos.

Mark McKenzie has done a terrific job of modifying the concurrently-running No, No, Nanette’s Art Deco set aided by stage manager Lauren Jimenez’s myriad properties, all of which Caleb Shiba lights with pizzazz, and sound designer Nick Galvan ensures the audience will catch every word of Lawrence and Lee’s script barring mike outages.

As for Gary and Lynda Krinke’s costumes and Kirklyn Robinson’s wig and hair designs, what they lack in 1920s/30s period authenticity is made up for in style and sheer number, in particular Walker’s wigs and gowns too numerous to count.

Hope Kaufman is assistant director. Bobby Collins is production manager. Dani Bustamonte plays Ito on April 6.

With Auntie Mame Dennis back in town, IVRT’s 2019 season opener guarantees audiences quite a few laughs, and never more so when the delicious Amanda Walker and/or the delectable Lauren Mayfield are scoring comedic bulls-eyes out Claremont way.

Inland Valley Repertory Theatre at Candlelight Pavilion, 455 W. Foothill Blvd., Claremont.
www.IVRT.org

–Steven Stanley
March 20, 2019
Photos: DawnEllen Ferry

Tags: Inland Valley Repertory Theatre, Jerome Lawrence, Los Angeles Theater Review, Patrick Dennis, Robert E. Lee