The Manor: Murder and Madness at Greystone is back for the first time since its last pre-Covid run, exciting news for L.A. theatergoers eager to return to the L.A. mansion where the titular “murder” and “madness” actually occurred.

 The murder-suicide deaths of oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny’s 35-year-old son Ned and Ned’s secretary Hugh Plunkett in the younger Doheny’s 55-room Beverly Hills mansion made L.A. headlines in February of 1929, a crime whose motives remain unclear to this day.

Not that the Doheny family wasn’t already in the news, the result of a bribery scandal involving Edward Sr. and Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall that made Fall the first presidential cabinet member ever to be sentenced to prison.

Playwright Katherine Bates weaves together that “Teapot Dome Scandal,” Ned and Hugh’s deaths, and a romantic quadrangle of her own invention in a fictionalized docudrama that has audience members going from room to room to observe events where they actually took place.

A prologue introduces us to the ghostly apparitions of The Manor’s cast of real-life characters, whose names have been changed, the better to protect the guilty.

They are Charles and Marion McAllister (Darby Hinton and Carol Potter), their 30something son Sean (Peter Mastne) and his soon-to-be bride Abby (Nathalie Rudolph), Abby’s father Frank Parsons (John Combs), Senator Alfred Winston (Daniel Leslie) and his wife Cora (Amy Tolsky), Sean’s friend/Greystone handyman Gregory Pugh (Eric Keitel), and Gregory’s London music hall chantoosie wife Henrietta (Kristin Towers-Rowles).

The audience then separates into three color-coded groups, the better to eye-witness a trio of scenes viewable in no particular order.

We visit the bedroom where Sean and Abby are about to consummate their marriage before an untimely interruption by Sean’s mother, the card room where we learn that Henrietta tricked Gregory into marriage by feigning pregnancy, and Charles MacAllister’s office where the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” bribery scandal is set into motion.

A post-intermission second act flashes forward a decade as actors and audience members once again move from room to room before reuniting in the foyer for the unfolding of the final tragedy.

All of the above adds up to something so out of the ordinary, it’s no wonder audiences have been returning to the Greystone year after year since The Manor’s 2002 debut.

Martin Thompson takes over for original director Beverly Olevin as a cast of both returnees and newbies deliver performances to do the Carringtons and Colbys of Dynasty proud.

Hinton’s scenes opposite Leslie provide the production’s most explosive fireworks as the two men connive to augment their already considerable fortunes.

Potter’s grounded work as Marion is another standout as is guaranteed scene-stealer Towers-Rowles as redheaded shrew Henrietta.

Mastne and Keitel ignite sparks of their own as two men in love with the same woman, i.e. the lovely Rudolph. (All that’s missing from Bates’ script are some homoerotic undertones to further stoke the romantic/sexual tension.)

The always reliable Combs and Tolsky do solid, understated work in a cast ably completed by a trio of guides: David Hunt Stafford as valet James, Gail Johnston as (mute) maid Ellie, and Katyana Rocker-Cook as housekeeper Ursula, whose Cockney accent would make sense if Bates’ script didn’t have her informing us she basically grew up in Greystone Mansion.

Bill Froggatt’s atmospheric sound design, costume designer Kristie Matteson’s elegant 1920s and ‘30s suits, gowns, and uniforms, and Judi Lewin’s period wigs complete The Manor’s production design in a setting that needs no scenic designer, with Greystone’s existing lights replacing a traditional theatrical lighting design. (At the matinee performance reviewed, there was also natural outdoor lighting throughout.)

The Manor: Murder and Madness at Greystone is produced for Theatre 40 by Stafford. Craig Hissong is stage manager. Philip Sokolof is publicist.

It’s been fifteen years since I last visited The Manor, making it the tastiest of treats to once again be back in “the rooms where it happened.” Simply put, The Manor: Murder and Madness at Greystone is the next best thing to time travel.

Greystone Mansion, 905 Loma Vista Drive, Beverly Hills.
www.Theatre40.org

–Steven Stanley
January 21, 2024
Photos: Casey Durkin

Tags: Katherine Bates, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatre 40