Images: Top, Poster for Lyric Stage's Kiss Me Kate; Bottom, Paula Plum and Carolyn Charpie in SpeakEasy Theatre's The Savannah Disputation [www.boston.com]Here I am back in Boston, this year on a halftime basis every second month and also on the other side of the Charles in the heart of Back Bay. One can't complain when one is a stone's throw from the T, Filene's Basement, Marshall's, Copley Square and Newbury Street and a short walk to downtown or the south end. I'm calling this my Mary Tyler Moore Year and live in hopes that, like MTM, "I'm gonna make it after all." To counter the displeasure of being away from my family for these five months (as they soldier on without me back home in Canada), I seek solace in the usual dark rooms of theatres.
The new theatre season has opened in the city with a lot of variety on offer. I want to see Diane Paulus' inaugural show at ART, a remount of the hit disco party version of Midsummer Night's Dream called The Donkey Show. And even though I saw the original production of August Wilson's Fences with James Earl Jones many years ago in NYC, it would be good to catch the new production at the Huntington. But this first weekend back in town, I went for lighter fare with Lyric Stage's Kiss Me Kate, the Cole Porter musical chock-full of great show tunes and built around yet another from the Bard: The Taming of the Shrew. Lyric's production, as with Follies last season, does an amazing job mounting a full-scale musical in such a small space. Directed by AD Spiro Veloudos (who was taking tickets at the door at last Saturday's matinee!), the show offers some strong work and moves along at the necessary pace for a nearly 3 hour running time. I liked the work from most of the leads and felt the chorus was also strong. Leads Peter Davenport (Fred/Petruchio) and Amelia Broome (Lili/Katharine) carry the show with their doubled roles as a warring divorced backstage couple who are performing in Shrew. Of course, they are destined for a romantic reunion, and the scenes incorporated into the show directly from Shakespeare work as comic counterpoints to the present day plot. I found the ingenue role of Lois Lane (yes!) played by Michelle deLuca slightly less successful, although she is a capable singer and dancer, because she failed to generate that magical connection with the audience necessary for musical froth such as this: charm, a very old-fashioned quality in this postmodern world. And not a quality that can be taught in theatre school. However, there was charm to be found in the gangster characters (Neil A. Casey and J.Y. Turner) who shadow Fred, falsely believing he owes a gambling debt. They ham it up to good effect and also get the showstopper tune "Brush up Your Shakespeare". Another small role in the show, Paul (Fred's dresser, played by Kennedy Pugh), gets the plum lead in "It's Too Darn Hot", a terrific number that opens Act Two. Choreographer Ilyse Robbins does her best to create dance sequences on the pocket-sized stage and the design elements were also strong, particularly the 1940's period costumes from Rafael Jean. Although the music sounded fine, the musicians themselves were nowhere to be seen, hidden away on a platform above the stage proscenium, and I wondered for a while whether the music was actually taped as a result. Call me a traditionalist, but there's something to be said for seeing the musicians at work during a musical...I missed their presence in this otherwise enjoyable show.
The second show last weekend was the season-opener from SpeakEasy Theatre. I saw three very good productions there last year, so was looking forward to The Savannah Disputation, a comedy about religion by Evan Smith. While the play has some very amusing moments, and solid performances from its mostly-seasoned four-person cast (with the exception of relative newcomer Carolyn Charpie). Nancy E. Carroll and Paula Plum play aging Georgian Catholic spinster sisters whose lives centre around their church and their friendship with its priest who comes over for dinner most Thursday nights. However, when a young evangelical missionary--her mission is to save Catholics from the devil-worship cult she sees it as being--knocks on the door, the sisters enter into a struggle to save each other's souls. Even the priest (Timothy Crowe) gets pulled into the attempt by embittered and 'mean' younger sister Mary to 'crush' the sweet, if deeply misguided Melissa and prove to her doubting sister that the Roman Church is the One True Church.
This may not sound like typically comic material, but in the hands of AD and director Paul Daigneault, and with this crack company, we learn some Biblical scholarship and get plenty of laughs along the way. My quibble with all this is the play itself, which veers dangerously into sitcom fluff-land at times. In the hands of a more skilled playwright than Smith (although he clearly knows his Bible and the Southern culture of the setting), we would have more backstory on all four characters than we get, and more subtext as a result. It all starts to feel a bit glib, and the stakes feel too low. One moment late in this 100 minute one-act illustrates for me how the play plays it safe when it could go to deeper and darker territories without losing its comic edge. Melissa is losing her battle for the sisters' souls in her Biblical bantering with Father Murphy and her final volley is to quote Revelations and the Coming of the Beast with the predictible fundamentalist interpretation that the beast is the Pope. Charpie plays this moment with the same perky and naive quality her sincere if ignorant character has had throughout the play. What was missing for me in this moment was the pure venom of loathing and fear that is bred by ignorance such as Melissa's and those of her ilk. If she really believed the Devil himself was present in that priest as she takes him on, I wonder if she would make herself so much at home, sitting on chairs and couches, rather than remaining ever on guard, circling her perceived enemy with more care. I don't know, maybe this play has nothing more to offer but the pleasure of its company, but I could see more potential here than its playwright himself was able to deliver.
