Don’t Miss Don’t Dress for Dinner

HART Theatre is back, roaring into the (somewhat) post-pandemic milieu with a nostalgic reprise. When HART moved into its current building in 2007, the first play staged was playwright Marc Camoletti’s broad French farce, Don’t Dress for Dinner, and the show was supposed to open March 20, 2020 as part of the Hillsboro company’s 25th season. As we all know, the advent of Covid-19 sent the theater world into two-year state of mostly suspended animation, and like many local stages HART is now picking up right where it left off – Don’t Dress for Dinner finally opened on March 18 to an enthusiastic audience who clearly felt that it was worth the wait!

First-time director Dawn Sellers has assembled a fine cast, including one veteran of the 2007 production – her husband Doug Sellers, who acted as both cheerleader and mentor as she tackled the challenging show. All six actors bring impressive resumes to the production, as do many members of the production team, and the result of Sellers’ direction and her support network is a charming play with great lighting, a clean and well-constructed set, period-appropriate costumes, and the comic timing, blocking, and restraint necessary for compelling farce.

For those of you who (like me) are not familiar with the play, a little background will help. Camoletti is best known for Boeing Boeing, which had a 7-year run in London starting in 1962 and has since become one of the defining farces of American professional and community theater. A sequel, Pyjama Pour Six, premiered in 1987, and was later adapted for English language audiences by Robin Hawdon as Don’t Dress for Dinner. The play retains its French setting, characters, and Gallic cultural themes – in particular, the stereotypical attitude toward marital fidelity or lack thereof.  The action starts quickly: Bernard has orchestrated a scheme that will allow him to spend the weekend with his mistress, Suzanne, at his country home near Paris. Wife Jacqueline is preparing to visit her ailing mother, and Bernard’s friend Robert is coming to provide an “alibi” for Bernard’s weekend activities, including the importation of a Cordon Bleu chef  (Suzette) to handle lavish meal preparation. When Suzanne learns that Robert is coming, she invents an excuse to stay home so she can spend time with him (Bernard does not know that Robert and Suzette are embroiled in a passionate affair). Bernard’s problem? How to explain Suzanne’s arrival to his wife. His solution? He tells Robert to pretend that Suzanne is his lover – something Robert is hesitant to do, since Suzanne will be upset that he is playing around with another woman. Robert reluctantly agrees, and plans to explain the scheme to Suzanne – but Suzette, the caterer, arrives first. Confused about the names, Robert enlists Suzette to play as his mistress. When Suzanne arrives, she is then cast into the role of caterer, despite her woeful inadequacy in the kitchen. Got that? If you need more, go see the show!

Each of the cast members shine in their own special way, but Doug Goodrum (Robert) really holds the show together. He is constantly tasked with explaining the unexplainable to other characters, a job complicated by the fact that he has to quickly adapt the story to fit each new arrival. He panics, stumbles over his words, and takes meaty pauses that are believably those of a befuddled sidekick (“you cooked a book?” is a frequent refrain), yet somehow keeps us clear on the tortuous path of farce.  Doug Sellers is relegated to the thankless role of a straight man, creating a convincingly odious Bernard.

Sarah Kearney’s “Suzette” is the unsophisticated rube in the room, yet you can see in her eyes and hear in her delivery the wily peasant street smarts that allow her to profit mightily from her role in the deception, and she provides fearless physical comedy.  Katie Prentiss (Suzanne) is appropriately lovely and convincingly clumsy and clueless as a chef – my front-row seat was startlingly close to the splash zone!  As the betrayed and betraying Jacqueline, Kira Smolev moves seamlessly from loving wife and daughter to passionate lover, yielding to confusion and finally smoldering fury as she gradually figures out what’s actually happening. The final character, Suzette’s husband George, is a smaller role that provides less opportunity for actor John Knowles – but he provides the slightly dim and threatening, hardheaded bulk that the part requires.

I applaud Sellers’ choice to skip the French accents – it’s awkward, and they are after all portraying characters speaking their native language. However, I did miss a Gallic touch in the set dressing. Other than the two small (and obligatory) pictures of a cow and a pig, there were no décor elements that suggested a French country villa, and this made it harder to relate to the players and situation as being specifically French. 

It’s been a tough couple of years for most of us, and there are still some pretty ominous winds blowing about. It’s a great time for a lively evening of comedy including lots of laugh out loud moments to give us a little respite from the stress and uncertainty of Covid, Putin, porch pirates, and a nationwide shortage of about 4,000,000 homes. HART’s Don’t Dress for Dinner is good medicine for the spirit with its complex story line full of uncomplicated fun.

Don’t Dress for Dinner is playing at the HART Theatre, 185 SE Washington, Hillsboro through Sunday, April 3, with performances Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. 

Deathtrap Resurrected at Mask & Mirror

Picture (by Michael Martinez) shows Diana LoVerso, Blaine Vincent III,
Jeff Ekdahl, Patricia Alston, and Bud Reece

 

By Tina Arth

Almost two years ago, I attended Mask & Mirror’s opening-night performance of Deathtrap, playwright Ira Levin’s classic dark comedy of deception. A few short days later (and before I had submitted a review), Covid-19 tore across the planet, and much of the world as we knew it, (including this particular production), immediately shut down. In a truly epic demonstration of the “show must go on” principle, Mask & Mirror has brought Deathtrap back to life. In some ways the show is virtually unchanged - it’s got the same director (Tony Broom), four of five original cast members, and essentially the same set – other than some new curtains and a bit of paint, I could almost have been at the original 2000 opening. However, in the ways that count, the current production is markedly more enjoyable – so even if you saw one of the original two performances, you should definitely plan to go back.

For Deathtrap virgins, a bit of background is in order. Playwright Sydney Bruhl, author of several popular murder mysteries, is in the depths of a prolonged slump. He’s been living off the faded glory of past hits and the gradually shrinking bank account of his wife, Myra, when he receives an unsolicited script from Clifford Anderson, a student from one of Sydney’s writing workshops. The script is maddeningly good – a sure smash, so good that Sydney and Myra concoct a devious scheme. They will resurrect Sydney’s career by tricking Clifford into “collaborating” (i.e., giving Sydney partial credit) for the finished product. From here, the plot begins a rapid-fire series of twists and turns, some diabolical and some simply ludicrous, as we meet young Clifford, a bizarre psychic neighbor named Helga Ten Dorp, and Sydney’s seemingly dingy but sharp-eyed lawyer, Porter Milgram.

The performances of the two women in the cast, Patricia Alston (as Myra) and Diana LoVerso (as Helga), can be credited with a significant share of the show’s improvement. Where their previous performances were solidly competent, both women now strive for and achieve real comic heights, using timing and physical comedy to ensure that every one of Levin’s farcical moments gets its due – and they are irresistible when they play off each other.

I must not dismiss the impact of Blaine Vincent III, the one new cast member, in his portrayal of Clifford Anderson. I can’t really describe his best moments without giving away too much of the plot, especially in some intense interactions with Jeff Ekdahl (Sydney) - leave it that he brings a solid and believable physicality to a demanding role. Ekdahl also delivers a strong performance – in a play filled with deception, he displays a chameleon-like ability to deceive both the audience and his cast-mates. Bud Reece (Porter Milgrim) has less opportunity to shine in a smaller role, but he still manages to surprise us a few times!

Just as in 2000, I was less impressed by the set design – for me, the story has maximum effect in a somewhat darker and more intimate space, with an abundance of macabre décor.  The spacious Rise Church Main Stage, often an asset, allows for cast members to be too far apart in some key scenes – there are times that Myra’s physical reactions to Clifford and Sydney are difficult to track because of the distance between the stimulus and the response.

Costume designers Kelcey Weaver and Jodi Johnson have done a great job of capturing the questionable fashion choices of the era – in particular, both Ekdahl and Vincent are imbued with late-seventies kitsch.

The timing of this production is perfect – thing are opening up rapidly, we are all ready for an undemanding evening of live theater, and the Mask & Mirror production provides a great place for the theater-hesitant to jump back in (with the comfort of knowing that they won’t even let you go upstairs to the lobby without proof of vaccination and a mask!).

Mask & Mirror’s Deathtrap runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm through March 20 at “The Stage” at Rise Church, 10445 SW Canterbury Lane, Tigard, 97224.