Review: The Torch-Bearers by George Kelly. Produced by Woman Seeking…a theatre company. Directed by Christine Mosere. With Larry Albert, Laurie Bialik, Brandon Felker, Eleanor Moseley, Richard Nguyen Sloniker, Kate Szyperski. Now through December 18 at Richard Hugo House.
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| Rebecca Olson, Eleanor Moseley and Kate Szyperski in “The Torch-Bearers” at Richard Hugo House now through December 18. |
This is an old play…we’re talking old enough to be your great-great grandma. It dates from 1922 and it was written by George Kelly, who was a fashionable satirical playwright of the era, as well as being actress/princess Grace Kelly’s uncle. (He was also gay; his life partner posed as his valet for 50 years…gee, those were the good ole days, weren’t they?) There’s nothing wrong with old plays; a well written play of any era can be relevant and interesting to contemporary audiences if it’s presented to them in a fresh, entertaining manner. But, certain types of plays are tough to pull off. The Torch-Bearers is a satirical comedy about rich people in the 1920’s behaving like boobs. It’s old school, meaning it’s a play that requires a traditional set, period costumes and hair, and a certain attention to detail. It’s also very theatrical and mannered and it has a large cast that do a lot of complicated interacting and require a lot of choreography. To be blunt, it’s a tough show to pull off. It requires a certain budget, or at least designers that know how to make very little money look good on stage, and it needs a strong director leading a capable cast, at home with the broad but arch comedy. Woman Seeking’s current production of The Torch-Bearers doesn’t quite hit the mark on any of those criteria and the result is an entertaining enough show that looks a little threadbare and a bit unfocused but largely well acted, (with an exception or two). It has too many talented people in it to be classified as community theater, but it does border on it, a time or two. I laughed quite a bit, and enjoyed most of the performances, and generally had a good time at The Torch-Bearers, but I left the theater wondering what it would have been like to have seen this show at a theater with a much larger budget and a huge crew of craftspeople to work on it. It’s a show about rich people, so it needs to look a bit richer and fuller.
The Torch-Bearers is a satirical Society comedy in its first act that veers into pure farce in the second. A group of pretentious Main Line/High Society types decide to form a community theater and they are rehearsing their latest work in the home of a young married couple, The Ritters. The group is led by the vapidly pretentious Mrs Pampinelli and features a troupe of hammy, amateur thespians who are utterly humorless about their “art”. Young Mr Ritter arrives home from a business trip to discover that his wife is the newest member of the group, and while initially amused by her enthusiasm, that soon turns to horror when he discovers that his wife is a terrible actress. Act II of the play takes place backstage at the group’s performance of “Winged Arms of Treachery” and the debacle that ensues during that performance. There’s a lot of door slamming, pratfalls, and zany antics involving misplaced props, faulty fake moustaches, missed cues, and curtains that refuse to rise to the occasion. It all ends relatively happy ever after, with Mr Ritter telling off Mrs Pampinelli, and the young couple reconciled and in each other’s arms. Cue the Max Steiner music and roll the credits.
This play does have its charms and any fan of film comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood, will appreciate the wit and humor of The Torch-Bearers. It’s definitely in the same school as Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story and Auntie Mame. (And, both the play Noises Off and Woody Allen’s film, Bullets Over Broadway seemed to have used a lot of thematic elements from this play in their respective works, though Mr Kelly certainly didn’t invent the back stage farce.) It’s breezy, snappy, Jazz Age fun with some great characters and comic situations and director Christine Mosere keeps the pace moving briskly. But, there are times when the stage choreography gets a bit muddled, especially in the first act with 8 or 9 actors on stage at one time. It’s tough keeping track of that many bodies on a stage,and she has my sympathies with blocking all those actors, but it does get a bit too busy at times and the focus gets diffuse and vague. It’s supposed to be a cacophony of noise, movement and confusion as the company rehearses in that drawing room, but it still needs to glide and flow with a certain rhythm that didn’t always come across. I’m going to put a bit of a blame on some of the actors, too. Some of them were a bit too animated and fidgety when their characters were supposed to be in the background and not at the center of attention. The director needed to be a bit firmer with some of those performances in those moments.
I’ve already mentioned the lack of stagecraft in the design of this show and frankly, it does hurt it. I know that this theater company, Woman Seeking, is a labor of love for Ms Mosere and the other members and they have my sympathies…it’s tough doing quality shows with a tiny budget. But, I also have to point out, if you’re a small, poor theater company with limited resources then maybe you should pick plays that don’t require big, literal sets and expensive period set dressing, costumes, and wigs? This production, and their previous one, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean are big, period shows with large casts and heavy demands for sets, lighting, costumes, props, hair and make-up. I know that a large portion of Woman Seeking’s mandate is to do shows that provide lots of parts for women. That’s admirable, but maybe they should focus on shows that could be done more expressively and more economically. In the case of The Torch-Bearers, the sets were dull but serviceable in a “let’s put on a show!” sort of way, but the costumes and hair only vaguely hinted at the 1920’s. From a design perspective, this production wasn’t a huge success. I encourage Woman Seeking to either find a contemporary play for their next production, or a classic play and do expressionistic interpretations for the design. Orson Welles had a tiny budget to stage Julius Caesar for his Mercury Theater in 1937 and he daringly, (for the time) did it in modern dress with allegorical allusions to Fascist Italy. It’s time to step up your design game.
Woman Seeking is very definitely an actor’s theater company and they do have some very talented artists working for them in this production. I loved Eleanor Moseley in Woman Seeking’s last production, “Jimmy Dean” and she’s front and center in The Torch-Bearers as the egotistical artistic director, Mrs Pampinelli. It’s a big, robust actressy role and Ms Moseley plays it to the hilt, with the appropriately theatrical voice and demeanor. She’s a helluva lot of fun in this part and well matched with Laurie Bialik as the bawdy Nelly Fell, an older society woman who acts as prompter for the theater company. Ms Bialik seems to be channeling Mary Boland, the great comedic screen actress best known as the Countess de Lave in The Women and she really rocks the the white wig she wears in this production and one of the few characters that looks of the appropriate period, (though the hair seems a bit more Thirties than Twenties).
As for the men, I’m a big fan of Richard Nguyen Sloniker, and he makes an ideal, light comedic leading man for this production, as the put upon Mr Ritter, with just the right, light touch required for this role and a smart sense of the timing required to carry it off. I also enjoyed Brandon Felker as the eagerly foolish juvenile in the play within the play. Mr Felker has a lot of stage charisma and it can go over the top at times, (see my review of Annex Theater’s Money Changes Everything from a few weeks back) and he was one of the actor’s guilty of being a bit upstage-y in the first act of this play, but he’s such an energetic and interesting actor, it’s hard to fault him for being so damn charming and enthused. I think he just needs a BIG, leading role to channel and focus some of that energy. When he’s onstage, you want him to have a lot to do.
I shy away from giving negative criticism to actors, but I do have an acting comment to make for this production. Actually, it’s more of a casting comment. I enjoyed Kate Szyperski’s leading performance in Woman Seeking’s “Jimmy Dean” but I wasn’t as enamored for her work here, as the ingenue, Mrs Ritter. It’s a cloying performance and not very convincing largely due to the fact…how do I put this, without sounding judgemental?…Ms Szyperski might have been ideally cast in this role in 1999 and though they are very cunning with the hair, make-up and costume choices for her, the fact remains she’s a bit too old to convincingly play this part. To be honest, the role is a bit one dimensional and beneath Ms Szyperski’s talent as well. It’s a classic, dewy-eyed ingenue role and a fitting role for a twentysomething actress, but it doesn’t have much of a range and only a couple good bits to go with it. It’s the least interesting of the four main female parts in this play. I know Ms Szyperski is a member of this company, but I think it might have been wiser to have cast a different actress for this role. She deserves better.
Who’s this for? Fans of those classic black and white film comedies of the Thirties and Forties, especially the daffy, romantic ones with Claudette Colbert or Katharine Hepburn or Rosalind Russell. If you’re looking for edgy, gritty drama, this ain’t the play for you.
– Michael Strangeways
