Déjà vu by
four
by
Michael Dresdner
You
might want to scroll down and read my most recent previous post; it’s a review
of The 39 Steps which opened one week ago at Renton Civic. Last night the same
play, but with a different cast, venue, production team, and director, opened
at Centerstage, and while the words and “plot” were largely the same, the
presentation was decidedly different.
You’ll
notice I put “plot” in quotes. There is one – the plot of Hitchcock’s The 39
Steps – but it’s really quite irrelevant, especially in this version. The
feeling you walk away with is that it’s merely a structural excuse for this
excellent four person cast to stage something remarkably close to a series of
Monty Python sketches. If you like that sort of thing, and fortunately, I do,
you’ll be delighted with how very well they do it.
Robert
Bergin, the only actor who inhabits just one character throughout, plays
Richard Hannay, the protagonist, with an earnest combination of reserve and
befuddlement reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart. He provides a small measure of sanity
needed to anchor the madness around him. Mariana De Fazio plays the three very
different women who guide Hannay’s convoluted journey with an understated
support that subtly but substantially aids and abets the rest of this well-meshed
ensemble.
It’s
just this well-constructed acting backdrop that enables the two clowns, Vince
Brady and Erik Gratton, to soar. They play a whole host of different outrageous
characters hell-bent on grabbing the laughs, and boy are they good at it. With
quick costume changes, a host of different voices, and elaborately energetic physical
comedy, they play a wide range of short, tall, gruff, absurd, giddy, and foolish
men and women. There’s one hilarious scene, with Gratton playing a short women,
on his knees and in drag, trying to sit on a bed, that alone is worth the price
of admission.
There’s
no set to speak of, save for an elaborate train trestle made of ladders and
boards that appears in one short scene. Instead, the four actors hustle a
variety of set pieces – chairs, tables, couches, counters, doors and windows on
wheels, etc. – not surreptitiously like dutiful stage hands, but quite overtly,
and usually in character. “This mockery,” they seem to say, “is brought to you by
us, the actors, moving set pieces, providing our own sound effects, and changing
our clothes, heights, and characters, right before your eyes.”
Aiding
both the actors and director Cynthia White is an army of back stage denizens
providing costumes by Julia Evanovich, sound design by Ray Pritchard, lighting
by Amy Silveria, set design by Jerry Clausen and Greg Heinzel, and props by Sheila
Criscione, Mary Sawyer, and Laura Campbell. Together, they make a team that
delivers a night of ribald fun.
All this
should come as no surprise from the theatre that so adeptly brings English
Pantomime to the Puget Sound each year. If there’s one thing Centerstage has a
good grip upon, it’s the combination of nuance and lunacy that is British
comedy.
The 39
Steps
September
28 through October 20, 2013
Centerstage
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