27 September 2003: Cooney and Chapman, Not Now, Darling
27 September 2003: Cooney and Chapman, Not Now, Darling
R & L Productions of Easthampton, performing in the Easthampton Town Hall Auditorium. Directed by Robert Laviolette and Mary Ann Scognamiglio. 2 hours 19 minutes. $10.00
You don’t expect American companies to do British farce well, even professional American companies, let alone community theatre like this, but the results tonight were surprisingly good. Much credit is due to Rob Laviolette, who co-directed and played the central role of the much put-upon, innocent but balding Gilbert Bodley, co-owner of the furriers Bodley, Bodley and Crouch, the other owner being Arnold Crouch. Laviolette plays the character to the hilt, a ganglion (a good Gilbertian word) of confused emotions and desperate resolve with a genius for getting into situations over his head — but with a comparable talent for somehow surviving, minute by minute, when every minute would seem to be his last. His partner, Arnold Crouch, is played by Eric Johnson, who hasn’t nearly the knack for split-second farcical timing that Laviolette has; and so we lose some of the delicious effect, which might otherwise have been realized, of Arnold’s constant efforts to deflect the hostile arrows of misfortune onto his long-suffering partner. Indeed, the acting is a bit uneven, but mostly in the minor roles, where careful observance of cues and generally adequate timing and pace are enough to get them by. That still leaves some very creditable performances in the three crucial female roles: Mary Annarella (whom I saw this past summer as Rosaline in the Hampshire Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost) as Gilbert’s would be mistress Janie McMichael; Roxanne Labato as the floozy, blonde-bewigged and dumb as hell, Sue Lawson; and Louise Krieger as Gilbert’s not-so-faithful wife Maude. Louise played Phoebe to my Wilfrid Shadbolt in last November’s Valley Light Opera Yeomen of the Guard, a delight to work with because of her superb comic timing and flawless delivery, as well as a fine mezzo-soprano voice whose spoken dimension is as good as the sung — all of that in evidence here. (Louise tried out for Josephine in the current VLO Pinafore, which I am directing; she is, alas, someone who has aged out of ingénue roles, and she will soon be ready — perhaps is ready now — for comic heavies such as Lady Bracknell.) I congratulated Louise after the performance and said how hard I thought it was to get British farce right. She said Mary Annarella observed that it is harder to do than Shakespeare. She is right about that, in many ways, and it is a tribute to all concerned, but especially to the co-directors, that such a ship-shape production of a Cooney farce could emerge in the wretched circumstances of a half-painted, make-shift auditorium with horrible acoustics and borrowed chairs.
But for all that it drew a good crowd, of all ages from teenagers (who can’t be used to women parading around live in their underwear, chaste though it was, and simulating n