IT’S ONLY A PLAY


Torrance Theatre Company closes its 2023-24 season with the most impeccably cast, directed, performed, and designed of the three productions I’ve seen of Terrence McNally’s backstage comedic gem It’s Only A Play.

It’s opening night on Broadway, and playwright Peter Austin (Bradley James Holzer) isn’t the only one awaiting reviews for his newest opus The Golden Egg.

So are the its director, its leading lady, Peter’s best friend, an infamous theater critic, and a starstruck fledgling actor who’s booked his first Broadway gig: carrying guests’ coats to the luxurious upstairs bedroom where the abovementioned luminaries have gathered as partygoers celebrate the show’s opening one floor below.

Malaprop-popping producer Julia Budder (Jennifer Faneuff) may have a tendency to misquote Irving Berlin (“There’s no business like the one we’re in!”), but if anyone deserves the Tony speech she hopes to deliver when awards season rolls around, it’s this daffiest of theater-loving ducklings.

Hollywood superstar Virginia Noyes (Kate Patel) has returned to Broadway fresh from an Oscar win (and a not so successful rehab stint) with an ankle bracelet to ensure she doesn’t evade parole.

Wunderkind British director Sir Frank Finger (Theodore Coonradt) has garnered so many rave reviews, there’s nothing he wants more now than a first-ever pan, and in the meantime, if he happens to display a certain tendency towards kleptomania, being knighted while still in your 20s does sort of put the pressure on.

Peter’s longtime bff James Wicker (Todd Andrew Ball) ought by rights to have been starring in tonight’s opus had he not achieved sitcom fame some nine seasons back, though with Out On A Limb on its last legs, he might just wish the part had been his after all.

Drama critic Irene Drew (Cat Rahm) may not have achieved her New York Times counterpart’s make-it-or-break-it status where reviewing is concerned, but her venomous write-ups are the stuff of legend.

Fresh-faced, fresh-off-the-bus Broadway hopeful Gus P. Head (Ronan Meade) can’t believe his luck in securing tonight’s gig as coat-check boy that has him hobnobbing with Broadway’s brightest.

And last but definitely not least, playwright Peter finds himself wishing and hoping and thinking and praying and planning and dreaming that The Golden Egg won’t lay one, though with a title like that, critics’ daggers may soon be out.

Anyone who’s ever done theater in any capacity will find much to identify with in It’s Only A Play, and if you happen to know who Tommy Tune, Daniel Radcliffe, Harvey Fierstein, and others of their Broadway status are, so much the better.

But even if the closest you’ve ever come to the Great White Way is a season ticket to Torrance Theatre Company, you’re in for two acts of laughter to do Neil Simon proud.

Fresh from directing Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge at Theatre Palisades, Cate Caplin makes it two winners in a row with It’s Only A Play, eliciting a septet of comedic star turns every bit as memorable as her previous cast’s dramatic work.

Surrounded by Caplin’s handpicked cast, Ball’s supremely, sophisticatedly catty James is even better in 2024 than he was when he dazzled in the role last year; Patel is movie star glamour personified and as gorgeous and talented as if she were the love child of Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie; and Holzer’s leading man looks and charisma are matched by his comedic and dramatic chops. (His Act Two tears had me shedding some of my own.)

Coonradt skewers every pretentious, overpraised British director to perfection, Faneuff’s Julia is as delightfully sweet and sincere as she is befuddled, and Rahm’s amusingly quirky Irene (originally Ira) makes it clear that Paulene Kael has tough competition in the cutthroat critic department.

Last but not least, newcomer Meade gives Gus a wide-eyed and eager-to-learn innocence that proves downright irresistible.

Jorge Macias’s elegant New York apartment set (scenic painting by Diedre Allabashi), Michael Mullen’s costume design finery, Steve Giltner’s expert lighting Macias’s spot-on sound design are all of regional theater caliber.

Daniel Scipio is stage manager, Jonathan Strand is assistant stage manager, and Cary Jordahl is technical director.

You don’t have to know the difference between Chita and Rita or Bens Franklin and Brantley to fall for It’s Only A Play, and if you do, you’ll love it even more. In either case, this is community theater at its pro-caliber best.

Torrance Theatre Company, 1316 Cabrillo Ave, Torrance.
www.torrancetheatrecompany.com

–Steven Stanley
June 9. 2024
Photos: Miguel Elliot

 

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