Center
Stage with Pat Launer on KSDS JAZZ88
THEATER
REVIEW
“RING ROUND THE MOON” – Moonlight Stage Productions
AIRDATE: MARCH 12, 2010
Ooh la la! Hold
onto your chapeau. In a frenetic French satire, you’d better listen up if you
want to keep track of who beats, beds or bamboozles
whom. “Écoutez bien!
It all starts with a patrician pair of
identical twins. Hugo is a heartless, amoral, manipulative playboy, while
Frederic is a decent, sensitive, milquetoast. Frederic loves Diana, the
spoiled, rich-bitch daughter of a self-made billionaire with a fiery young
mistress who’s having an affair with the businessman’s private secretary.
Vicious rich-girl Diana is engaged to the nice twin, Frederic, but she really
loves his nasty brother, Hugo. Hugo decides to derail the engagement, since he
loves Diana but doesn’t really know it yet, believing himself
incapable of any positive emotion. So, Hugo contrives an intricate plot. He
hires a lowly but lovely dancer from the Paris Opera and transforms her, “My
Fair Lady” style, into an aristocratic beauty, the belle of a ball thrown by
the twins’ imperious, devious, wealthy and wheelchair-bound aunt. Isabelle, the
dancer, arrives with her loquacious, pretentious mother in tow, as well as a
middle-aged roué who has been directed by Hugo to claim Isabelle as his niece,
though he’d prefer that she be his mistress. When the snooty aunt gets wind of
Hugo’s scheme, she starts to pull a few manipulative strings of her own. And voilà! L’amour triumphs in the
end. Whew. Got all that?
It all becomes hilariously clear in the
fast-paced, 3-act, class-conscious satire, “Ring Round the Moon,” by Jean
Anouilh, best known for his 1964 play, “Becket,” which was made into a stunning
movie with Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. “Ring Round the Moon” came a lot
earlier, in 1947 and it manages to remain as wacky, madcap, acerbic and
sophisticated a period piece as it was half a century ago.
What the whip-fast comedy demands is
crackerjack timing and a stellar cast, since every one of the dozen or so
characters is a polished little gem.
Moonlight Stage delivers a shimmering jewel
of a production. Jason Heil’s sharp-edged direction
sparkles, and the ensemble is scintillating, headed by
In a lovely winter garden, on a magical,
moonlit spring night, fantasies, hypocrisies, busybodies, subterfuge, secrets
and spilled beans abound. The forces of goodness and innocence are pitted
against the calculated malevolence of people who take sport in controlling the
lives of others, simply because they have the power or purse-strings to do so.
This is one delicious confection, flavored
with a hint of spice and a soupçon of strychnine, served
up as enchantment and romance. Bon appétit!
“Ring Round the
Moon” runs through March 21 at the Avo Theatre in
©2010 PAT LAUNER