THE PLAY’S THE THING

There’s a reason why so-called “old chestnuts” are rarely revived, evidence of which can be found in Theatre 40’s mostly sluggish 2022 revival of Ferenc Molnar’s 1920s chestnut The Play’s The Thing.

Not that Molnar’s play, adapted by P.G. Wordhouse from the Hungarian original Játék a Kastélyban, doesn’t start off promisingly enough with an opening scene so meta, it seems quite astonishing that Broadway audiences first saw it back in 1926.

In it, playwright Sandor Turai (Daniel Leslie) complains to longtime collaborator Mansky (Michael Robb) about the length of time it takes an audience to figure out “who’s who and what they are all up to” when “up goes the curtain” (as much as a quarter of an hour, he maintains), and then proceeds to provide all relevant information about himself, after which Mansky and Turai’s young composer nephew Albert Adam (Eric Keitel) follow suit, in addition to situating the action in a castle located on the Italian Riviera.

A whole lot of idle chatter then ensues before the three men overhear Albert’s prima donna fiancée Ilona Szabo (Kristen Towers Rowles) apparently being seduced by a married former flame, fellow actor Almady (Todd Andrew Ball).

That Ilona and Almady’s extended tête-à-tête takes place entirely behind closed doors doesn’t do much to perk things up, nor does much of the lulling dialog that follows, with the exception of the delightfully self-aware sequence of false fadeouts that end a very long first act.

It’s not really until Act Two that The Play’s The Thing finally takes off as Ilona and Almady perform the play-within-a-play that Turai has written to convince Albert that what he overheard the night before was in fact his fiancée and her ex rehearsing the play they’re now debuting before a select audience, and that when Almady spoke about touching something “smooth, round, velvety, and fragrant,” he was actually referring to a peach and not Ilona’s shoulder.

Rowles and Ball are at their best here, eliciting legitimate belly laughs from Ilona and Alamady’s deliberate ham acting, and it’s a ball hearing Ball being made to pronounce names like “Marquis Jean François Gilette de la Tour d’Argent, lord of Perigord des Champignons and Saint Sulpice de la Gran Parentiere.” (“My God, it’s enough to give a fellow apoplexy,” he moans.)

Director Melanie MacQueen would have done well to cut significant chunks from The Play’s The Thing’s midsection, and to have Leslie and Robb pick up the pace throughout. (The production clocks in at two hours and twenty minutes which is at least twenty minutes long for the romp this one purports to be.)

Keitel isn’t given much to do but look handsome, and though Milda Dacys’s Miss Mell is presumably the same nationality as the play’s other characters, i.e. Hungarian, her decision to play the part, not with the crisp British vowels of her fellow actors, but with a thick Central European accent, makes no sense.

Jeffrey Winner may be the only cast member to escape unscathed, making the weird-and-wonderful most of every one of footman Johann Dwornitschek’s lines (and of the scene change he takes charge of midway through Act One).

Jeff G. Rack’s sumptuous castle set is one of his best for Theatre 40, warmly if a tad too dimly lit by Derrick McDaniel. Michèle Young’s costumes are mostly all 1920s winners, which is why Miss Mell’s cinched skirt and blouse seem out of place, as do Ilona’s long tresses. (The bobbed ‘20s wig Rowles sports in Act Two ought to have been worn throughout.) And Nick Foran’s jaunty sound design provides further proof that his addition to the Theatre 40 designers’ roster was a fortuitous one.

The Play’s The Thing is produced by David Hunt Stafford. Don Solosan is stage manager. Philip Sokoloff is publicist.

Theatre 40 has previously proven adept at discovering early-20th-century gems like Elizabeth McFadden’s Double Door (1931) and J.B. Priestley’s Dangerous Corner (1932), proving that old does not necessarily equal old chestnut. Other than a few sections that do indeed work, The Play’s The Thing is unfortunately not the thing this time round.

Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills.
www.Theatre40.org

–Steven Stanley
May 22, 2022
Photos: Eric Keitel

 

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