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Coming
to life: Randolph in Enchanted April.
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Late
Bloomers
By
James Yeara
Enchanted
April
By
Matthew Barber, Directed by Normi Noel
Shakespeare & Company, through Sept. 2
Enchanted
April’s final image is one of joyous humanity: Lotty Wilton
(the sublime Diane Prusha), arms outstretched, spins slowly
downstage-center as petals cascade from above, her face bathed
in warm light so that she glows with satisfaction. The scene
sums up the effect of Normi Noel’s production at Shakespeare
& Company, for it is a production for mature audiences,
in the fullest senses of “mature.” Redemptive, restorative
and sexy, Enchanted April is the theatrical equivalent
of a “chick flick.” Call it a “mama drama,” for Enchanted
April is as rich with mature feminine fantasies as those
teenage girl-bonding movies. Think “The Traveling Sisterhood
of the Ladies Who Brunch” and you have the effect of (and
the target audience for) Enchanted April.
From its origin as an upper-class 1921 novel, made into an
admired 1991 movie, this 2003 play adaptation has proven its
regional popularity with the merlot-and-brie bunch. The play’s
13 scenes are broken into two acts. The first act is wet and
stormy England, depicted under Noel’s smart direction as a
series of short scenes done by rearranging four wooden chairs
and two small wooden benches. The bleakness of the stage is
perfectly mirrored in the bleakness of Lotty Wilton’s marriage
to staid, gray-haired barrister Mellerish Wilton (the indubitable
Malcolm Ingram); when Lotty answers a rental advertisement
for an Italian villa “for those who appreciate wisteria and
sunshine,” one simply smiles in assent of the wisdom of her
whimsy. Of course renting an Italian villa for the month of
April, sight unseen, with three equally mature, lonely, wounded
women whom she doesn’t know, makes perfect sense, because
Prusha’s Lotty definitely appreciates wisteria and sunshine,
especially in the rain and dank of England.
In keeping with the suspension of disbelief working in Enchanted
April, Lotty’s loopiness (she has visions and admits,
as Mellerish memorably mentions to her and she repeats, “My
mind is like a hummingbird; one seldom sees it land”) provokes
an equally desperate woman, Rose Arnott (a luminous Tod Randolph)
to join Lotty on her adventure. Rose’s failing marriage to
writer Frederick Arnott (Dave Demke) is as bleak as Lotty’s,
which is as empty as Lady Caroline Bramble’s (Corinna May)
frequent affairs, which are as severe as Mrs. Graves (a wonderful
Elizabeth Ingram), who knew Tennyson and has references readily
available from the Archbishop of Canterbury. That these four
women could share the chairs onstage, let alone an Italian
villa for a month, is the sort of happy miracle that makes
stage redemption so comforting.
It’s the second act of Enchanted April that is most
pleasing, with its creation of the lush Italian grounds of
the villa, full of wisteria, sunshine, and whimsy. Failing
marriages are restored (there is a brave scene of Mellerish
flashing his bum, twice, that underscores how staid men can
be loosened up by wisteria and sunshine); broken hearts can
be mended by artistic men who inherit Italian villas; and
severe women can be warmed by goat’s milk and long walks in
the Italian countryside.
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