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| Maids
of the mist: (l-r) Steeves and Naughton in Wonder of
the World. |
A
Barrel of Laughs
By
James Yeara
Wonder
of the World
By
David Lindsay-Abaire, directed by Rob Ruggiero
Barrington Stage Company, Lenox Memorial High School, Lenox,
Mass., through Aug. 5
The
picaresque Wonder of the World receives the perfect
production by the peripatetic Barrington Stage Company at
the Duffin Theatre in Lenox Memorial High School. Awaiting
the opening of its new home in Pittsfield, BSC mines comic
gold with this recent off-Broadway Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle.
Director Rob Ruggiero keeps the pace fast, the performances
exact and dead on—not sloppily indulgent as could easily happen—and
the result is a laugh filled hit. This is as fun as racing
over the Niagara Falls in a barrel and living to laugh about
it.
This is the central act of Wonder of the World, going
over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Laughing about it sums up
the audience’s response to playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s
non-sequitur-filled absurdist romp from Brooklyn to Niagara
Falls, with stops all along the twisted psyches of the main
couples. George S. Kaufman would have written Wonder of
the World for the Marx Brothers if only he had had enough
mescaline.
The story is an extended riff on the Marilyn Monroe film Niagara,
in which Monroe is a newlywed on her honeymoon plotting to
kill her husband; an onstage TV shows the movie while the
audience files in. Wonder of the World traces the physical
and psychic journeys of runaway wife Cass (Keira Naughton),
who impulsively flees her seemingly boring, but secretly kinky,
husband Kip (Brian Hutchison). With respect to Kip, a man
bearing aspic should always be suspect, but it’s his secret
box filled with Barbie heads that gets the audience howling
with laughter, especially when Cass makes “Vivian,” Kip’s
sexual favorite, bounce along in one of play’s many hysterical
epiphanies.
Cass hooks up with Lois (Finnerty Steeves) on a Greyhound
to Niagara Falls, and the epiphanies multiply faster than
roadkill on I-90. Lois plans to commit suicide by climbing
into the pickle barrel between her thighs and going over the
Falls because her husband left her; Cass has “a list of things
I wanted to do in life: eat venison. Become friends with a
clown. Visit a prison and witness an execution by lethal injection.”
Lois’ husband left her suddenly just as Cass left her husband,
so of course Lois becomes Cass’ sidekick thus enabling Cass
to mark off another “to do” on her list.
The play moves from one darned thing after another, all woven
together and connected as if this were a contemporary Candide.
(Though set, preposterously, to the Carpenters’ “Close to
You.”) Kip hires addled elderly couple Karla (Libby George)
and Glen (William Bogert), who have failed at all their previous
jobs, to track down Cass; they succeed by mistake, and find
that Karla has hooked up by chance with Maid of the Mist boat
pilot Captain Mike (William Bogert). What follows is a set
piece with Captain Mike and Cass at a medieval-fair-themed
restaurant center-stage; Lois and Karla at an Indian Reservation-themed
restaurant stage-left; and Kip and Glen at “Maison de Macabre,”
a goth restaurant stage-right; they are serviced by “Mary
Pickerling,” “Walks-with-a-Tray,” and “Gormina Gallows” in
tour-de-force lightening-quick-change characterizations by
Susan Louise O’Connor.
Wonder
of the World’s various murders, accidents, misprisions,
non sequiturs, happenstances, misfortunes, lucky breaks, epiphanies,
and shocking revelations play out to a logical conclusion:
stuck in a barrel stuck on the rocks just at the apex of the
Falls. It’s a moment in homage to all things worth pulling
at Niagara: salt-water taffy, fudge, Marilyn Monroe, and your
leg. Wonder of the World is guaranteed laughs.
Southern
Gothic
Sweet
Bird of Youth
By
Tennessee Williams, directed by David Jones
Williamstown Theatre Festival, Williamstown, Mass., through
July 30
Sweet
Bird of Youth’s origins as a one-act play are easily
discernible: The series of disjointed scenes between the opening
and closing ones between the fading hustler Chance (Derek
Cecil) and the on-a-bender faded movie star Princess (Margaret
Colin) beg for deconstruction. Focusing exclusively on the
two Chance-and-Princess scenes bookending Sweet Bird of
Youth makes for convenient criticism; Chance and Princess
are variations on characters seen in Williams’ Streetcar
Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly
Last Summer, and the carnality, self-awareness, self-abasement,
and violence displayed are riveting and disturbing.
The opening post-coital scene—Derek Lane’s sensual set of
Princess’ Royal Palms Hotel room in the afterglow of David
Weiner’s honey-toned light de sign—pulls in the audience as
the allegorical couple roil and toil on Easter Sunday morning,
Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” sounding from a nearby church
on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Cecil’s Chance and Colin’s
Princess are an attractive couple of aptly named monsters,
sucking first oxygen from a tank, then alcohol, then hash,
then each other.
From their negotiations for Princess’ sexual release and Chance’s
spiritual need for his long-lost hometown girl Heavenly Finley
(Bess Wohl)—the symbolism gets heavy quickly in the play like
the humid Southern air—through attempted blackmail to the
scene’s conclusion, the audience empathizes. They watch, mesmerized.
Cecil’s Chance more than meets his match in Colin’s sultry
voiced, achingly beautiful, ultimate “Cougar” Princess. You
can feel the sting of the sex and the hash and the whiskey,
and you want to know what happens to these desperate decadents.
This visually and aurally honey-themed opening of negotiated
copulations is perfectly matched by the closing scene’s midnight
blue and starlight sparkle of sacrifice. Colin captures the
elation of Princess’ surprising career resurrection on Easter
evening, and her alarm that Chance will sacrifice his manhood
and his life for Heavenly’s love. Director David Jones’ wise
staging makes this ultimate violence palpable with ending
image of ersatz patrician Boss Finley’s henchman surrounding
Chance with their switchblades open to cut.
So ignoring the intervening three scenes (more than half)
of Sweet Bird of Youth is convenient. Who would believe
that a ruling politician like Boss Tom Finley (a frighteningly
believable Gerry Bamman) would have a campaign “crusade” to
preserve family decency despite his daughter Heavenly being
debauched by Chance? “My daughter’s no whore, but she’s had
a whore’s operation,” Boss frets to Dr. George Scudder (Ted
Koch), the man who performed the abortion and who has Boss’
approval to marry Heavenly, and Tom Finley Jr. (Christopher
Evan Welch, who takes a caricature and creates a character).
How could any ruling politician shelter a son like Tom Jr.,
who had “grades that only a moron would have an excuse for,”
whose drinking excesses had to be covered up, but is still
accepting his father’s mantle to carry on political power?
Who could believe a 1959 play highlighting the hypocrisy of
a ruling politician like Boss Finley campaigning on huge TV
screens upstage about the “Northern radical press” misrepresenting
his moral “crusade” while his mistress waits in the bar of
the Royal Palm Hotel? Why not ignore Williams far-fetched
contrivances that a ruling politician would intimidate dissent
“because the Voice of God called me to execute this mission”
by having his henchman rough up a heckler?
Sweet
Bird of Youth is easy to enjoy for the one-act arc of
Princess and Chance, but it is the risk of the almost-over-the-top
middle half of the play that makes Williamstown Theatre Festival’s
production so relevant and ultimately riveting today.
—James
Yeara
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