“Visiting Mr Green”– Village Theatre Guild – 5/31/09

Hooray! Something to take away the taste of Wild Goat!

Visiting Mr. Green by Jeff Baron premiered in 1996 in Stockbridge, MA, moving to off-Broadway in 1997, where it ran for a year. It has since been translated into twenty-two languages and been performed in thirty-seven countries.

It would seem to be somewhat popular.

It is the story of an elderly Jewish widower visited by a young American Express executive named Ross. Ross almost hit Mr. Green with his car when Mr. Green walked into the street without looking both ways and now must visit Mr. Green weekly as part of his community service sentence. Mr. Green doesn’t want visits. He wants to be left alone in his cluttered, food-challenged apartment to stare bitterly at the walls. Can two sociologically diverse Jewish men stay together for two hours of stage time without driving each other crazy?

This is your standard “opposites clash” comedy/drama. There is very little in the plot that isn’t telegraphed from a mile away – so if you have standard construction on your house, the interior decoration had better be pretty fuckin’ good. It is. Baron’s plot construction is ordinary but his story-telling is excellent. He really does well by his characters. It bothered me for a little while that Ross was continually surprised and disturbed by Green’s reactions to various situations. You want to smack him a couple of times and say, “He’s an eighty-six year old conservative Jew – what did you think his reaction would be to something like that?” But every day there are people so blinded by what they are going through that the concept of other people having their own, divergent line of reasoning is a foreign one. So that’s okay.

Maureen Komperda’s set design is perfect (helped in no small way by the intimacy of VTG’s space. The hallway to Green’s bedroom is an actual hallway in the building, so that works out nicely.) Jim Van De Velde’s lights are great. I’m not used to VTG having an effect where somebody opens an imaginary fourth wall curtain and sunlight comes through the imaginary window. Nice work.

Sue Keenan’s direction was polished and nearly invisible – which is a good thing, not a bad one. A play about two guys talking in an apartment could be the dullest thing on two feet. Or off two feet, if the director plunks them down on a couch and has them just talk. Keenan’s work was just right for this show.

Chris Richardson as Ross gave a fine, nuanced performance. Ross is an abnormally friendly and cheerful young man, not easily distressed by the surliness of his assignee. Richardson avoided being a Pollyanna, making Ross a warm, believable human being. His distress over his personal issues and his zeal to help Green correct the mistakes he has made in life are very well done. Creating a real person in a standard issue (if very well written) sitcom is not easy. Try it sometime. In most shows, Richardson's would be the best performance of the evening.

But.

Roger Westman (as Green) is a man I would judge to be in his mid-fifties and he is supposed to be playing an eighty-six year old man. Time for a lot of bending and creaking and phony hand tremors, right? Wrong. If you’ve ever spent time around an elderly person, you’re going to know if there is so much as one phony move in a performance like this. You’ll see it. Right away. Anything phony. Except that you won’t see it here. Westman does not play an eighty-six year old man. Westman is an eighty-six year old man. This is one of the strongest performances I have ever seen. He doesn’t move like an eighty-six year old man. He doesn’t listen like an eighty-six year old man. He doesn’t think like an eighty-six year old man. He is an eighty-six year old man. A cantankerous, wounded soul whose wounds aren’t less painful for being mainly self-inflicted. This is one of those performances I get to tell you about once every two or three blue moons: go see Visiting Mr. Green if you love theatre, because it doesn’t get better than this.

It is not belittling Richardson’s performance to praise Westman so much. But Westman had the harder job. Westman & Richardson play beautifully off of each other and make a terrific team.

Final word for Visiting Mr. Green: very good script, terrific performances. Go see it. “Thumbs Up”, “Four Stars”, “It Didn’t Suck” and all that rot.

Information here: www.villagetheatreguild.org

It Had To Be You – 8/11/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

Finally.

Since I began posting these reviews last month, I’ve seen some really good things, some really bad things and some mediocre things. I’ve never had the occasion to give a full out rave. Until now:

Carla Mutone and Jack Smith are comedic gods and if you don’t order tickets for It Had To Be You at the Village Theater Guild in Glen Ellyn right now, you’re a masochistic theatrical fool who would rather see thirty people do a big name musical passibly than watch two people in a little name show blow the roof off the joint.

Let’s get this out of the way: Directing, lights, sound, set design & decoration, costumes (love the psychedelic boots) and all other backstage aspects are top notch and provide a terrific framework for the acting. Now:

It Had to Be You by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna concerns Theda Blau, an actress/writer wannabe who traps TV commercial producer/director Vito Pignoli in her apartment on Christmas Eve and attempts to seduce him in every conceivable way known to mankind, if a hurricane can be called seductive.

That’s it. That’s the plot. So as opposed to something like Noises Off, which depends mainly on physical math and geometry, It Had to Be You lives or dies on the character work.

Jack Smith is the perfect straight man for this type of show. He’s warm, personable and funny. Completely believable as a fairly laid-back commercial success who likes everybody but himself. Vito comes across as really decent guy who wouldn’t hurt anybody – even a borderline-psychotic screwball who effectively kidnaps him. Smith’s timing is impeccable and his acting in the more serious moments is right on target.

Carla Mutone’s voice has the slight rasp of the mid 1960s Lucille Ball – and that’s not the only comparison (assuming Lucy wanted to fuck Mr. Mooney). She is a fireball of energy, clearly understands every last itsy bitsy nuance of the part, has a radiant lovability that keeps you from wanting to smack Theda and delivers one of the greatest comic performances you are ever going to see. Mutone completely sells the idea that the wackiness isn’t just sitcom zaniness, but is backed by desperation and misery.

However, it takes two to tango. The work of Mutone and Smith is more than the sum of its parts. One of my prime complaints, as you may have surmised last week, is when actors don’t connect with each other onstage. There is never a moment when Mutone or Smith is in a private little world, showing us How Well They Emote. They are completely in sync at all times and operate like a well-oiled machine (although considering some Theda’s persuasive methods, “well-oiled” is not the most delicate phrasing.) This is teamwork of the highest caliber. Community theatre hasn’t been awful lately, so it isn’t as if this is a diamond in a shit pile. But It Had to Be You is a diamond just laying there waiting to be picked up. The ticket price is only $10. Pick up the goddamned diamond.