Brendan Chaney, Justin Beland, Hanlon Smith-Dorsey, Lanny Warkentien, and Zachary Litwiller. Photo courtesy of LTA.
If you’ve taken an English class in America sometime in the past 100 years, you’re probably familiar with the works of Mark Twain. What you probably haven’t heard of is his ill-fated theatrical script “Is He Dead?” It was never produced in his lifetime and languished in obscurity until Twain scholar, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, rediscovered it. After an adaptation by playwright David Ives, the script finally did get some amount of attention with a short Broadway run in 2007. Seventeen years later, Little Theatre of Alexandria (LTA) has brought the play to life again, under the direction of Joey Pierce, with a charming and hilarious production of their own.
…a charming and hilarious production…the talent of their cast and crew shines through…
“Is He Dead?” focuses on an eclectic collection of starving artists in Paris circa 1846, including a fictionalized version of the real painter, Jean Francois Millet (Lanny Warkentien), who eventually became an influence on Van Gogh. They struggle to sell any paintings at all and clash with their unscrupulous landlord Bastien Andre (Kirk Lambert) until Agamemnon “Chicago” Buckner (Brendan Chaney) devises a plan to have Millet fake his death in order to raise the value of his paintings. It works beyond their wildest dreams, skyrocketing Millet (now permanently in disguise as his invented twin sister, Widow Tillou) to the status of national hero and his friends from paupers to playboys, almost overnight.
What follows is a burlesque-flavored farce with quite a bit of Twain’s DNA in the script. The dialogue is quick, snappy, and peppered with clever puns, wordplay, and audience asides. It’s not an easy pace to keep up with, but LTA’s ensemble cast is more than up to the task, matching the frenetic raising stakes with a consistently strong energy and practiced comedic timing. There are some issues with the quality and consistency of the dialects that throws this balance off a bit—the non-French accents come off as somewhat sloppy, and only some of the French characters actually speak with a French inflection. Still, the cast more than comes through where it counts in their vibrant, over-the-top characterizations, and the punchlines land considerably more often than they don’t.
Matt Liptak’s set design, Jean Schlichting and Kit Sibley’s costumes and Adam Konowe’s lighting more than make up for the dialect’s slight authenticity gaps with a convincing portrait of a poor artist colony, complete with a charcoal-besotted couch and unsold paintings (including some real Millet prints) plastering most of the wall space. A script this dialogue-focused doesn’t necessarily need a world this lovingly rendered, but it certainly gives the cast a lot more freedom to play, and they use that freedom well.
Warkentien, in particular, deserves extra mention for his performance as Widow Tillou. He expertly plots the arc of Millet’s initial reluctance into a full-bodied portrayal of Tillou as a distinct person in her own right. There’s still a certain share of worn out “man in a woman’s dress” physical comedy at hand, but many of Tillou’s funniest bits come instead from the delightfully bizarre personality Millet constructs for her, and Warkentien’s careful performance makes those moments come together brilliantly. Matt Liptak’s set design and Jean Schlichting and Kit Sibley’s costumes also help considerably in fleshing out this evolution as Millet/Tillou. His companions bloom from bedraggled peasants to nobles with their own estate complete with a put upon servant (Justin Beland), bringing with them all further brazenness and creativity that continues to fuel the escalating cycle of farce.
Producing “Is He Dead?” over a century after Twain’s death raises a question that Twain himself seemed to ask in the writing of it: how much would we care about this particular script if it weren’t penned by a long dead giant of the American canon? The script is competent enough, to be sure. It’s still Twain and, even in a genre he had little experience or comfort with, he managed to translate much of his hallmark sharp and satirical voice to the stage. Compared to works of his that are legendary and innovative enough to be taught in those English classes to this day, Twain was painting well within the theatrical lines of the time in his flirtation with the art form. If the script were to have been rediscovered without attribution to the author, it’s not certain whether it would have received enough attention for a Broadway run. Because after all, Mark Twain is dead. LTA’s production doesn’t answer these questions, nor does it seek to. That’s OK because the talent of their cast and crew shines through just the same no matter who wrote the script.
Running Time: Two hours and 15 minutes with one intermission.
“Is He Dead?” runs through June 8, 2024 at the Little Theatre of Alexandria, 600 Wolfe Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. For more information and to purchase tickets, go online.
