Rear, Robert Stanton (l), John Ahlin. Front, Naomi Jacobson, John Catron. Photo by Scott Suchman.
Want to see critics in the hot seat? Then run, don’t walk, to Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre (STC), where they’re getting what many actors and directors think they deserve!
Critics are skewered in a double feature, with Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Critic (in an adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher) occupying the first part of the program and Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound following intermission. But so, with love, are all aspects of theater.
STC’s artistic director Michael Kahn has staged these classic comedies to near-perfection.
The Critic, which the author of A School for Scandal considered his favorite, was produced in 1779. But especially with Hatcher’s clever, seamless updating, this satire of critics and all conventions theatrical, might have been written yesterday.
The audience of the January 11th performance didn’t stop laughing. The mirth in fact begins when they opened their programs and found such characters names as Signora Décolleté and Sir Fretful Plagiary, a criticism-resistant playwright.
STC’s artistic director Michael Kahn has staged these classic comedies to near-perfection.
The critic of the title, Mr. Dangle, a terrific John Ahlin, baits Mr. Puff, who writes, you guessed it—literary public relations. When Puff, played brilliantly with nervous energy and facetiousness by Robert Stanton, decides to turn playwright, the results are delightfully preposterous.
The entire STC stage is turned into a theater—cleverly fashioned by set designer James Noone. There’s so much mayhem in Puff’s absolutely awful melodrama it’s hard to believe only a handful of people are involved. Then, Sandra Struthers, Charity Jones, and John Catron—who portray Mrs. Buxom, Décolleté, and Sir Fretful Plagiary—also, hilariously, play actors with multiple parts within.
Naomi Jacobson is the exasperated Mrs. Dangle; Hugh Nees is the servant/prompter; and Robert Dorfman is the mocking (of course) critic, Mr. Sneer.
The much-more contemporary (1961) The Real Inspector Hound, a short, one-act play by Tom Stoppard, drew from the audience more sporadic but enthusiastic laughter. You have to watch carefully as the playwright twists the plot around.
Like much of the Czech-born playwright’s work, it is absurdist and toys with levels of reality. But Hound is also a clever parody of the kind of parlor murder mysteries written by Agatha Christie, in which several people are trapped indoors, and at least a few of them may not be who they seem.
The reviewer-related part of the play concerns a second-tier critic named Moon (also Stanton) and the pompous Birdboot (Ahlin).
On the surface, both men are observing a whodunit murder mystery set in an English country home. In reality, they have other preoccupations: Moon with Higgs, the superior he is fiercely jealous of, and the married Birdboot, with the young actresses he promises good reviews to in exchange, apparently, for sexual favors. In particular he is obsessed with Cynthia Muldoon (Jones), mistress of the country home and his latest would-be conquest.
In other words, can critics ever be objective?
Playing melodrama to the hilt are Jones and Struthers, as her rival, Felicity; Catron as Simon, their lover; and Nees as Major Magnus. Naomi Jacobson is the show-stopping ornery, maid.
While the characters in the play-within-the-play, especially the elusive Inspector Hound (Dorfman), try to solve the mystery, Moon and Birdboot get sucked into the action. But I’ll say no more.
The casts of both plays are the same, with the exception of Brit Herring, the radio voice in Hound. These are ensemble works, and each performer is an indispensable (and delightful) part of the whole.
Director Kahn has scored two triumphs in one. He is ably assisted by period movement consultant (for the Sheridan work) Frank Ventura; fight director Paul Dennhardt; and costume designer Murell Horton, who is to be particularly commended for all the elaborate 18th-century clothing worn in The Critic. Mark McCullough is lighting designer. Adam Wernick is the composer, and Christopher Baine is the sound designer.
Advisory: For ages 13 and up. Slightly suggestive sexuality and, in the case of Hound, mild violence.
Running Time: Two hours and 20 minutes long, with a 15-minute intermission.
The Critic and The Real Inspector Hound continue through February 14, 2016 at the Lansburgh Theatre of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, 450 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC. For information and tickets, call 202-547-1122 (or toll free: 877-487-8849) or click here.
