THE WISDOM OF EVE

The results are uneven, and at nearly three hours in length the play outstays its welcome, but at the very least Mary Orr’s The Wisdom Of Eve gives Whitefire Theatre audiences the chance to see how All About Eve might have turned out had it been adapted by its original author and not by the brilliant Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who received sole writing credit (and two Oscars) for the film. (The answer is not nearly as good.)

Early scenes don’t differ all that much from the 1950 movie’s start-up, so presumably they were part of Orr’s 9-page short story published in the May 1946 issue of Cosmopolitan.

We’re introduced to 40something Broadway legend Margo Crane (Dahlia Waingort Guigui)—I’m guessing Mankiewicz held the rights to “Channing”—on the evening when her closest chum Karen (Barry Brisco), impressed by stage door regular Eve Harrington’s (Esther Guigui) claim to having seen Margo’s current play over fifty times, brings her backstage to meet the acclaimed star.

And just like in the movie, Margo is so bowled over by Eve’s adoration that she promptly offers her a job as her personal assistant, soon after which Eve convinces Karen to persuade Margo to let her double as the star’s understudy, though the odds of Eve’s ever going on for the irreplaceable Miss Crane are slim to none, except of course where the conniving Eve Harrington is concerned.

From then on, playwright Orr is on her own, which is why there’s no Bill Sampson to romance the decade-older Margo (here she’s already married to director Clement Howell, played by John Mese) or catty theater critic Addison DeWitt to narrate the tale (and win George Sanders a Oscar), and their presence (and the plot points they engendered) are missed.

More significantly, the directions Orr takes The Wisdom Of Eve pale in comparison to Mankiewicz’s Oscar-winning script. (The movie’s Eve would certainly never have boasted to a newspaper columnist about how fiendishly cleverly she insinuated herself into Margo and her entourage’s lives the way Eve does in Orr’s play.)

And though All About Eve clocks in at a solid two hours and eighteen minutes, I’m guessing that few viewing it have ever found themselves checking their watches as I found myself doing once The Wisdom Of Eve hit the two-hour mark.

Leading lady Dahlia, who produced the play as a starring vehicle for herself and actress daughter Esther) creates a Margo very much her own, fiery, mercurial, and vulnerable, but Esther could do more to suggest the calculation that lies beneath Eve’s apparent innocence and sincerity. (Having Eve open Act Two with a gut-wrenching “Cry Me A River” seems an unscripted add-on to showcase Esther’s power pipes in a play that never once suggests that either Eve or Margo are doing a Broadway musical.)

Even more nonsensical is having the role of Karen played as a flamboyant gay man who goes by “Mrs.” and “she” and “wife” (in the mid-1960s no less) no matter that Brisco delivers the production’s most fabulous performance as “Mrs. Lloyd Roberts.”

At the very least, director Bryan Rasmussen has most of the cast (completed by Eric Keitel as Lloyd Roberts, Michael Mullen as Tally Ho and a gender non-conforming Leila, Mitch Rossander as Bert Hinkle, Brady Gentry as Harvey, and Corrynn Englerth as Vera Franklin) delivering their lines in the heightened mid-Atlantic-accented pre-method style suggested by Orr’s script.

The Wisdom Of Eve is given a serviceable set design by Jeff G. Rack (Rossander’s black-and-white upstage projections help set the scene), and though Mullen’s glamorous period costumes are by far the production’s finest and flashiest design element, Derrick McDaniel’s lighting and Rossander’s sound design are both first-rate.

Aviva Berger is executive producer. Projection graphics are by Bree Pavey.

There’s a reason why All About Eve has endured nearly three quarters of a century since its 1950 release and The Wisdom Of Eve has largely vanished since its brief off-Broadway debut in 1979. This 2024 Whitefire Theatre revival is far from a dud, but it’s no All About Eve.

Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.
www.whitefiretheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
November 2, 2024
Photos: Blaine Clausen

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