Casting the Upper Crust
2007-12-05
Co-directors Jane Farnol and Joe Russo of New Milford’s Theatre Works have had the good sense to stage one of the most popular romantic comedies ever filmed. In 1940, it launched Katherine Hepburn’s career after box office debacles like Bringing Up Baby threatened to consign her to Hollywood anonymity. Luckily for us, author Phillip Barry was around to change all this. Like New Milford’s current production, his The Philadelphia Story was originally a play, and ran on Broadway for over 400 performances. Howard Hughes purchased the rights to the film for Hepburn, and MGM’s subsequent option to make it a film came at a price. The indefatigable Kate beat the studio to the punch, outmaneuvering it by buying up the rights and going on to personally supervise the hiring of producer, director, and co-stars.
The feisty Connecticut-born actress chose two other movie eminences as leading men: Cary Grant and James Stewart. A cast doesn’t get much better than that. Both men later went on to perform brilliantly in Alfred Hitchcock films, which like the Stewart sleeper It’s A Wonderful Life are still among filmdom’s most impressive achievements. Hepburn originally had her sights set on Spencer Tracy (a superb acting talent, and a star with whom the actress had a long love affair) and Clark Gable, both of whom were unavailable for casting at the time.
The film won academy awards for best actor (Stewart) and screen writer (Donald Ogden Stewart), as well as nominations for Best Director, Best Actress, Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actress. The Philadelphia Story in 1940 was consequently an embarrassment of riches—thanks to Kate’s keen intelligence. The 1956 remake of Barry’s play was High Society, redone as a Cole Porter musical with crooners Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, and the queenly Grace Kelly as the female lead. So the New Milford Theatre Works current production is a trip down a memory lane that has a sentimental value for those of us who go back too far to care to remember. Not that we’re quite ready for assisted living; it’s just that some of the bounce is gone—a handicap that evaporates watching Philip Barry’s delightful play.
The drama is a comedy of manners about a well-heeled Philadelphian family, including the somewhat spoiled Tracy Lord (played by the attractive Jenny Schuck, whose stage movement suggests she has had some serious dance training). Tracy is a socialite recently divorced from her husband C. K. Dexter Haven (played by Steve Manzino, who, with a polished nonchalance garnished by an ever present pipe, awaits his opportunity to go in for what the hoi polloi would disdain to call the final kill).
When the play opens, Tracy is engaged to stuffed shirt George Kittredge (played to the hilt by Peter McGee). Tracy’s family—especially her mother, Margaret Lord, played with a generous dose of hauteur by trouper Katherine Almquist—is no help in freeing her from the traps of social station. Tracy has to find her own way, and does so after a quite innocent, but inebriated romp in the family swimming pool with a reporter, Mike Connor (played by Jake Horvath, a veteran of musical theater on the local scene). Mike becomes enamored of Tracy, like every other available bachelor on a short list that looks like it might get longer before the sun goes down.
Tracy and Mike connect romantically in a way that naturally infuriates the pompous George, while the debonair Dexter looks on in amusement at the follies of strangers, friends, his lost love, and their screwball capers. Mike and a photographer side kick, Liz Imbrie, (played without overacting, and in a focused way by Beth Bonnabeau-Harding) were commissioned by Destiny magazine to invade the Lord household to hold interviews around the upcoming wedding, a prospect that horrifies mother Margaret, who equates such media exposure with going to hell in a hand-basket. For her, it foments an atmosphere that is “demented, deranged, and derailed.” She is mistaken, of course, since what this family needs is a bit more outrageous fortune to keep things in proper perspective. Some of it is provided by uncle Willie Tracy, who has an appetite for whiskey and pinching bottoms (not necessarily in that order), and who is played energetically by the multi-talented Brad Blake, a virtuoso on the Lord family piano, as he is with the well-timed quip.
Tracy and her intended are obviously not on the same wave-length. He is nouveau riche, and like many late comers to affluence, believes that appropriating the snootiness of the upper class is the way to forge an identity suitable for his newly appropriated status. It doesn’t wash. You know from the getgo something is out of whack with Tracy’s choice of future husband, but the playwright has you guessing who will actually land her. She has to have an epiphany about the right man all right, but who will it be and what will bring it about?
A hilarious confluence of accidents paves the way, although Dinah Lord, Tracy’s younger sister (played engagingly by Abigail Heydenburg, a mere sixth-grader who is also performs on a wicked flute and cello in her spare time) imagines she is the architect of the satisfying denouement. As one might well imagine, Tracy is scooped up at the end by Dexter, her former husband, as if at the eleventh hour she couldn’t say no to a good thing, even if the good thing was a bad one a short time before.
Other performers in this production turn in commendable portrayals. Of special note is Charles R. Roth as the paterfamilias, Sandy Lord. Mr. Roth has a commanding and focused presence on stage, and his sturdy baritone voice gave a shine to the shenanigans swirling around him.
Joe Russo’s set design was attractive and appropriate for this play, and his collaboration with Tom Libonate on sound and piping in forties ballads by then pop vocalists gave a tincture of authenticity to the era in which The Philadelphia Story is set. All members of the cast of performers seemed as if they had a whale of a time mounting this production—and it shows.
Directorial approach is a matter of interpretation. This reviewer would favor a emphasis that places restraints on fast-paced, frenetic action, in favor of a slower, more measured approach to the foibles of the characters in The Philadelphia Story. The danger is that rushing things brings the show perilously close to the farcical (as in the comedies of Georges Feydeau). It also increases the temptation to mug, or to represent emotion, rather than permitting it to surface naturally in characters who take themselves quite seriously, despite their comic predicaments. The real charm of their adventures is sure to come through by downplaying the furious push to be funny, and the humor is there without the heavy-handed artillery. In this, as in all other matters creative, less is more.