Testimonials
|
| |
Welcome to the Green Mountain State
|
|
<< Back
Oldcastle cast shines in weak Simon comedy
By: By Ralph Hammann - August 13th, 2004
“I Ought to Be in Pictures”
By Neil Simon
Directed by Tim Foley
Oldcastle Theatre Company, through Aug. 28
BENNINGTON, Vt. — Oldcastle seems to have a penchant for producing lesser efforts by Neil Simon. This one, about an estranged father and daughter, offers scant evidence of Simon’s deserved status as one of our preeminent comic writers. Given two of the performances here, Oldcastle ought to have done the more deserving piece, “The Gingerbread Lady,” to which this bears similarity.
In that better play, Simon wrote of the relationship between an alcoholic singer and her daughter; here he writes of an irresponsible writer and the daughter who shows up unexpectedly on his doorstep after a separation of 16 years. The plotting is unconvincing. The laughs, for discerning viewers who demand more than Simon in TV sitcom mode, are few. But if you like your predictable sitcom in three dimensions, this will likely do, and Tim Foley, in his main stage directing debut at Oldcastle, moves the action along fairly swiftly.
Herb Tucker is a has-been screenwriter living in a West Hollywood bungalow that he shares once a week with his lover, Steffy Blondell, a makeup artist who would like to make Herb into an honest man. As the play opens, Herb is about to be reintroduced to Libby, his daughter he hasn’t seen in 16 years. Now 19, Libby has traveled cross-country from Brooklyn to establish a relationship with Herb and become a movie star. The former is the action of the play; the later is a pipe dream suitable for a calabash.
The expected one-liners telegraph their arrivals with disturbing regularity, and the punch lines have more paunch than punch. Neither is the comedy very effective as a tale of reconciliation. There’s a sort of disingenuousness and rather too-obvious manipulation that robs the writing of its intended heart.
Nor has Kenneth Mooney aided matters with his set design. While the layout of the bungalow works admirably, for some reason Mooney has allowed brown to dominate the muted color scheme. Brown. Not a rich fertile brown, but a dull, slightly bilious brown. Brown is just not an innately funny color.
It thus falls on the abilities of the actors to give the show life and carry it as far as it can go. Oldcastle has assembled one of the stronger casts I’ve seen there in the past couple of years, and they work hard.
Hard work isn’t quite enough to make Herb much more than a collection of quips. I’ve much liked Bill Tatum’s performances at Oldcastle and can’t imagine who among their stalwarts could deliver a better portrayal of Herb. On opening night, Tatum seemed to be struggling with the occasional line, but this is less a problem than the sense that he is expending too much effort throughout. I don’t know how one can honestly deal with the dialogue dealt Herb, but it might help to casually throw some of the one-liners away. It would also help to ease a bit more nervously into the new relationship with Libby and to then display more palpable warmth, something missing in his final hug. A more experienced director might have helped, given that Simon has pretty much marooned the actor playing this role, but it is to Tatum’s considerable credit that he acquits himself respectably.
Nan Mullenneaux, who was one of the many joys of Oldcastle’s production of “Company,” is genuine as Steffy, and although the role may be brief, this formidable actress imbues it with a long history. She ought to play a lead here.
When Meredith McCasland played Laura in Oldcastle’s “The Glass Menagerie,” she was something of a revelation. The range of this young actress is further displayed here as she deftly handles the demands of comedy and creates a first-rate performance from second-rate material. McCasland is interesting from the moment she sets her hiking boots on the set and carries on in her appealingly forthright, confident and vulnerable manner. An indomitable force of optimism, McCasland’s Libby provides the color so absent elsewhere on stage. She even manages to make tolerable the worst assault on the English language, the Brooklyn accent. Lovely, spontaneous and naturally charming, she really ought to be in pictures.
While it does not represent a theatrical milestone for Oldcastle, this production does represent a return to competence and credibility for a company that seemed to have lost its way with wayworn direction, wayward casts and windward material.
Ralph Hammann is The Advocate's chief theater critic. |
|
|
