Friday, October 17, 2008

Theater reviews: Fiorello!, On Golden Pond, and Ghosts

By Arnold Wayne Jones of Dallas Voice

I wonder whether local theater companies, in planning their seasons, spent much time thinking about how close to the presidential election their productions would run, and if they considered any deeper messages in the selection of shows. Because it seems more than coincidental that Lyric Stage would mount Fiorello!, a musical about a lefty political reformer who became a hero of the working man; or that Contemporary Theatre of Dallas would put stage On Golden Pond, which conjures up images of a curmudgeonly John McCain with his palsied finger on the button more than Henry Fonda delivering his swan song.

Of the two productions, Fiorello! is the all-around better show — and it’s not just because its hero represents Obama within its Zeitgeist. First is the delightful Bock and Harnick score, performed, as always, by Lyric’s supremely gifted singing cast. It’s a true ensemble piece that allows many to shine.

Rarely revived, Fiorello! is the Tony and Pulitzer winner about the early 20th century New York City congressman and mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia (played by Brian Gonzales). As biography, it’s pretty standard stuff: populist meets with hardships, gets girl, loses girl, gets another girl instead, leaves a legacy because of his political fortitude. But everything has such snap, such vigor, that even at nearly three hours it whizzes by.

Director Cheryl Denson’s eye for detail is admirable, from the fast-moving, authentic and versatile set to actors who capture the patois of the city. Gonzales is an especially convincingly Noo Yawkuh — scrappy and tough, with bits of overreaching. He’s almost upstaged by Megan Woodall as Dora, who’s squeaky voice lands her somewhere between Kate Monster, Little Shop's Audrey and Lina Lamont. She and scene partner Brian Patrick Hathaway manage some great screwball-comedy timing.

There’s nothing screwball about On Golden Pond, aside from the disconnect between the age of the characters and the somewhat raciness of the dialogue. But in the era of rappin’ grannies, even that seems less revolutionary than it once was.

Like many other plays of its day — Steel Magnolias, Crimes of the Heart, Driving Miss Daisy — On Golden Pond, here directed by Michael Serrecchia, is a quirky comedy-drama about domesticity that plays out alternatingly saucy and sentimental. What we are left with is a cozy show, quite familiar but not abrasively so, which avoids being mawkish until the second act, when heartfelt family confrontations seem to come from nowhere only to induce teariness. But it’s sweet enough that you can forgive that.

And it’s easiest to forgive Jerry Russell as Norman Thayer, the lovably irascible old poop spending his twilight summer on a lake in Maine. Russell mostly gets all the good dialogue in the show, from growling that the death of a lesbian neighbor at age 97 “leaves something to be said for a deviant lifestyle” to riding his daughter’s fiancé (Stan Graner) about sex. Of course, Norman’s flippancy crosses a line and comes at a cost, but not before Russell tickles and moves us with his beautiful performance.

The show can feel a little too clever for its own good at times, but in the end cockles are warmed and nobody’s hurt. Seeing it resembled celebrating an early Thanksgiving — tense family relationships get strained and patched up amid a lived-in family room — only you don’t have to watch the Cowboys get beat. Not unless you go for a Sunday matinee.

A third theater opening this week, WingSpan Theatre Company’s Ghosts at the Bath House Cultural Center, might not call to mind the election season per se, but it does have such a modern sensibility you can almost believe someone here will go into politics.

Written by Henrik Ibsen in the 1880s, Ghosts helped usher in the style of theater we now call contemporary: Ordinary people dealing with petty and realistic issues in a naturalistic way. Lanford Wilson’s translation maintains that flavor in a plot that could be from a “Jerry Springer” episode, only without all the chair throwing and head-bobbing: Infidelity, pornography, illegitimate children, fornication, syphilis, secret affairs and tobacco… how much trashier can you get?

But while the play still seems relevant and interesting, almost everyone in the cast goes a little too big. The genius of Ibsen was his ability to turn prosaic people and events into grand entertainment, but Mike Shrader, Francis Fuselier and Susan Sargeant all seem to be playing it more like a melodrama — overwrought glances, cloying gestures, roiling subtext. When the script turns preachy, the performances need to be ratcheted back more than they are. Bill Jenkins — he of the voice made to narrate audiobooks — plays the most stereotypical character (the pompous, hypocritical cleric), but manages to strike just the right tone.

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