THEATRE REVIEW:
KPBS AIRDATE: November 25, 2005
Two time-tested classics; two terrific productions.
You might think that a 66 year old drama and a 110 year-old comedy would be
shopworn and dusty. But “The Little Foxes” and “Arms and the Man” have a great
deal of relevance today. One’s about insatiable greed and lust for power. The
other’s about personal and political hypocrisy and the idealization of war.
Could there be anything more timely?
When George Bernard Shaw wrote “Arms and the Man” in
1894, it established him as one of the greatest wits in London. The comedy is
set in Bulgaria, 1885, in the home of a pretentious bourgeois family. Young
Raina is enamored of the romance of combat and ‘a higher love.’ But after her
bedroom becomes host to a Swiss mercenary, reluctantly fighting for her
country’s enemy, the Serbs, she rethinks her philosophies -- and her engagement
to a ridiculously bombastic Bulgarian officer.
UCSD’s wonderfully droll production is beautifully
designed by Jedediah Ike and marvelously directed by Joseph Ward. Remember
those names; both will be completing their MFAs soon, and you’re sure to be
hearing from them again. The cast is a delight; without resorting to camp, they
strike just the right notes of pomposity, veracity and absurdity. Rebecca Kaasa
is thoroughly enchanting as Raina, and as the two men in her life, the
ludicrous Sergius and sensible Bluntschli, Scott Drummond and Ryan McCarthy are
splendid. With war on everybody’s minds, a little humor goes a long way.
There’s a bit of humor in Lillian Hellman’s “The
Little Foxes,” but it’s of the bitterest kind. Hellman was definitely dipping
her poison pen in acid when she wrote this caustic tale of second generation
carpetbaggers in a Southern town at the turn of the last century. This 1939
drama, some might say melodrama, is a seething account of intra-family
treachery and avarice. In pursuing an unsavory business deal, the Hubbard
family sibs – two brothers and their cutthroat sister -- play ever-nastier
tricks, each trying to out-fox the others. This malevolent clan could be seen
as a chillingly dark microcosm of American free enterprise – a dog-eat-dog
world of profit uber alles, survival
of the vilest.
Cygnet Theatre has mounted a deliciously vicious
production. Artistic director Sean Murray has designed one of his most
beautiful and detailed sets, and his cast is sublime. Rosina Reynolds brings
more color and nuance to the role of monstrous Regina than Bette Davis did in
the film. Glynn Bedington is superb as Birdie, the fragile, faded Southern
belle. Tom Stephenson is slick, casually cruel sib, Tim West his brutish
brother. Michael Harvey and Rachael Van Wormer provide ballast as the only
mildly admirable characters in the play, though their passivity has encouraged
the malicious family machinations.
So. What’s it gonna be? Satire or cynicism? Choose
your dramatic weapon.
©2005 Patté Productions
Inc.