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How
to Make a Good Impressionist
By
Kathryn Ceceri
The
Enchanted
By
Jean Giraudoux, directed by Kevin McGuire
The Theatre Company at Hubbard Hall, through March 14
The
Enchanted is sweet and airy and funny and very, very clear.
There are no hidden meanings here; Giraudoux’s themes and
ideas and conflicts are all out in the open for everyone to
see. Isabel, the darling of a small French provincial town
given charge of the girls’ school when their teacher has a
baby, leads her barefoot class across a bridge to a stream
straight out of Monet’s Waterlilies to study botany.
Not monocots and dicots, but the language of trees and flowery
metaphors that are exactly that.
Something very strange has happened to this sleepy little
town. Fortune, the mayor explains to the incredulous inspector,
“seems to be displaying some intelligence.” The old and the
stingy are struck down, while the needy, for a change, win
the lottery. The townspeople attribute this unlikely orderliness
to the appearance of a ghost, believed to be the spirit of
a man who pursued his wife and her lover from Paris, doing
them in and then disappearing himself into the lake. The town
gossips report that Isabel has been meeting this ghost, captivating
the entire town and threatening to contaminate the entire
country with happiness. The mundane or the ethereal? Which
will Isabel choose?
Every aspect of Hubbard Hall’s production reinforces the idea
that beauty and happiness are real and attainable: Hal Lemmerman’s
simple set, where even the sapling trunks are dappled in Monet’s
palette; the sound and music by Marianne Rahn-Erickson that
signal twilight or underscore a romantic moment; the costumes
by Mariah Sanford-White revealing the free- spirited nature
of Isabel and her girls and the staid respectability of the
city officials.
Kevin McGuire’s direction manages to be funny without crossing
the line into irony. He never belittles the characters, no
matter how pompous or flaky. Katie Ann McDermott as Isabel
is pure but not childish; she knows what she’s about. David
Girard’s Inspector displays his skeptical nature with every
look and gesture. His allegiance to the concrete and the predictable
lead him to declare women and ants “the same species of insect.”
He transfers responsibility for the girls’ class from Isabel
to the Supervisor of Weights and Measures, hoping that “one
month’s discipline and you won’t be able to tell one from
another.”
It isn’t until Act III that the Supervisor (Adam Jansson)
makes his move, but when he does he gets one of the most interesting
speeches of the play as he lays out the poetry in the life
of a civil servant. The rest of the players—including McGuire
himself as the amused and bewildered Mayor, Benjie White as
the town doctor whose role in life (and in the play) is transition,
Stephanie Moffet and Beverley Owen as the gossiping spinsters,
and Tom Mattern and Kermit Westergaard as a pair of executioners—make
for a colorful supporting cast. Even the bevy of independent
little girls deliver their lines with great expression. My
only quibble was with the Ghost (Mike Maloney), whose pale
menace far outweighed the mysterious attraction he supposedly
exuded to Isabel and the townsfolk.
In short, The Enchanted is positively enchanting.
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