When it comes to terrorizing an all-American family while scheming to get his own egomaniacal way, nobody did it better in the 1930s than radio superstar Sheridan Whiteside, just one reason why Golden-era Broadway fans won’t want to miss The Group Rep’s spiffy revival of Kaufman and Hart’s screwball comedy classic The Man Who Came To Dinner.

Not that Mesalia, Ohio factory owner Ernest W. Stanley (Doug Haverty) and his social-climbing wife Daisy (Laura Wolfe) weren’t initially thrilled to have the famed commentator (Jim Beaver) as their dinner guest this Christmas, but that was before he slipped on the ice leading up to their doorstep, threatened a $150,000 lawsuit (a whopping 2.5 mil in today’s bucks), and from his wheelchair turned their downstairs into his own personal fiefdom with private secretary Maggie Cutler (Hartley Powers), nurse Miss Preen (Kay Cole), and Stanley family butler and cook (Sal Valletta as John and Lareen Faye as Sarah) at his ever insistent beck and call.

Before long, entomology professor Metz (Steve Shaw) has brought by a glass cockroach farm, Broadway diva Lorraine Sheldon (Susan Priver) has gotten herself enlisted in one of Sheridan’s self-serving intrigues, sophisticated English playwright Beverly Carlton (Chris Winfield) has shown up to perform his latest Noël Cowardesque ditty, and comedy movie star Banjo (Michael Gabiano) has arrived with enough one-liners for a week’s worth of Groucho.

Whiteside, meanwhile, sets about encouraging the Stanleys’ early-20s offspring to disobey Daddy, son Richard (Neil Angevine) by pursuing his dream of being a professional photographer and daughter June (Anastasia Burnett) by accepting labor organizer Sandy’s (Nick Asaro) engagement ring, while doing his most fiendish to make sure Maggie’s budding romance with Mesalia newspaper editor Bert Jefferson (Mark Stancato) comes to naught and trying to figure out why Mr. Stanley’s dotty live-in sister Harriet’s (Michelle Bernath) face looks so familiar.

Not only that, but when it turns out that Whiteside might actually be staying with the Stanleys under false pretenses, he cajoles his attending physician (Fox Carney as Dr. Bradley) to lie on his behalf by promising to read the aspiring writer’s autobiographical novel.

The names being dropped by Sheridan and his coterie (Zasu Pitts, Katharine Cornell, and Sam Goldwyn among them) may be Greek to anyone too young for Social Security, but not all that much has changed over the past eight decades in our fascination with celebrity or the power that fame bestows.

Director Bruce Kimmel has the classic mid-20th-century three-act comedy genre down pat, guaranteeing snappily paced snappy patter from an all-around terrific cast generating laughs galore.

Beaver follows masterfully in Sheridan Whiteside-originator Monty Wooley’s acerbic but perhaps not entirely heartless footsteps (or should that be wheelchair tracks), Priver is glamorous perfection as Broadway diva Loraine, Winfield’s Beverly could teach Noël Coward a thing or two about sophistication and wit, and Gabiano makes Banjo his outrageously funny own (with a bit of Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks thrown in).

Powers’ Maggie is as lovely as she is zesty, Stancato makes for a dynamic Bert, and Haverty and Wolfe delight as the ever more frazzled Mr. and Mrs. Stanley as do boyish charmer Angevine and ingenue-next-door Burnett as their rebellious offspring.

  Cole is a pinch-faced treat as Miss Preen, Carney scores laughs as the most earnest of aspiring autobiographers, Bernath is a dotty, tour jeté-ing hoot as Harriet, and Shaw evokes the wacky Professor Irwin Corey as roach expert Professor Metz, with Asaro, Faye, and Valletta providing fine support as do Bita Arefnia, Cheryl Crosland, Christian Land, John Ledley, and Leslie Young in assorted cameos.

The Man Who Came To Dinner looks terrific on Winfield’s Midwest living room set, knickknacks and holiday decorations supplied by properties designer Young, and the entire cast looks fabulous in costume designer Michael Mullen’s 1930s finery, all of the above expertly lit by Douglas Gabrielle, with sound whiz Shaw completing the design mix.

Preteen sisters Chihoro and Momoka Kato perform a charming “Silent Night,” and though they did not appear at the performance reviewed, Kathleen Delaney, Barry Pearl, Nick Santa Maria, Sherry Michaels, and Marina Shtelen may well be lighting up the stage when you attend, and I’ll be stepping in as Professor Metz December 27-29.

The Man Who Came To Dinner is produced for The Group Rep by Haverty. Brianna Saranchock is assistant director. Jody Bardin is stage manager.

1930s radio may have gone the way of the dinosaurs, but as reality TV and YouTube make abundantly clear, celebrity worship never goes out of style, nor does The Man Who Came To Dinner, one of The Group Rep’s best.

The Group Rep, Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Boulevard, North Hollywood.
www.thegrouprep.com

–Steven Stanley
December 15, 2019
Photos: Doug Engalla

Tags: George S. Kaufman, Los Angeles Theater Review, Moss Hart, The Group Rep