Summer is for many of us a time to travel: escape the Houston heat, the dull drumbeat of politics on the tube, the routine of work. Main Street Theater’s production of Noël Coward’s 1939 comedy “Present Laughter” adds another dimension of escape. It slips audiences back to a time when serious theater could be known less by its ideas than by its charm, its wit, its indulgent satire of the peculiar world of the theater itself.
Such escapes are less Dr. Who-like adventure than a vacation in a place that possibly never existed except in the public’s imagination, a place where no one works (except at making clever remarks), everyone has time (and energy) for flirtations and dalliances, and even aging is an ill held at bay (if only by self-denial). And if the comedy is less consistently successful now than in the days when Coward ruled the London and New York boards, it never totally misses its targets. It merely creaks in spots and sometimes mutters more than sings.
The story is straightforwardly complicated just enough. Garry Essendine, glamourous star of the London theater scene for many a year and a comically autobiographical version of Coward himself, is preparing to leave for an extensive traveling production across Africa but finds he is packing more than his signature silk dressing gowns. There’s the young ingénue, Daphne Stillington who, forgetting her latch key, must spend the night in the spare room of Garry’s luxurious studio, not to mention the neophyte playwright Roland Maule who plans to attach himself to Garry’s glamour, an ex-wife, a secretary, house servants, and two business partners involved with the same the seductive woman, Joanna Lyppiatt. Fortunately, when Garry cries out, “For the love of God, stop being theatrical,” no one including himself pays the slightest attention since being theatrical is what the play is about, and the theatricality stops only when characters and audience escape the theater.
Such a merry-go-round might well grow tiresome if not for the zest and energy that the talented cast brings to Coward’s plot. As Garry, Joel Sandel brings his years of stage experience to create a man always acting even as he grows increasingly miscast as the romantic lead. His dressing gowns are made just a tad larger than they should be, and Sandel fits his character to that image. Add in his ability to deliver pithy jests amid Garry’s overplayed despair and frequent visitations to the studio’s booze stash, and the result is a figure who constantly keeps both the audience’s attention and off-kilter sympathy. As the dominant women in his life, Patricia Duran as Liz, Garry’s friendly but fed-up ex, and Amanda Martinez as the amoral seductress Joanna play their very different roles like perfectly pitched bells: clear and memorable. Like his mentor Shaw, Coward knew how to write strong female characters who are far less stereotyped than the play’s era would suggest. Both actresses make themselves at home in their tailored suits (Liz) and sexy gowns (Joanna) projecting their personalities well beyond their costumes’ suggested limitations. In this, they are joined by Elizabeth Marshall Black as Monica Reed, Garry’s long-suffering secretary who has long gotten over his charms and the glamour of theatrical life. Black creates a figure of both efficiency and pragmatism—the one who makes Garry’s daily life work.
Beyond these main figures, the production excels in its eccentric small roles, especially Deborah Hope as Garry’s duster-weaving, cigarette-stealing Swedish housekeeper. To watch her flop and swish her way across the stage to answer the door is a true comic delight. Similarly, Brock Hatton as Roland Maule, a young would-be playwright with a propensity to attach himself to Garry and women’s furs, manages to communicate his fanatical obsessions in his facial expressions and his body language so that even when silent he draws attention to the comic danger he suggests. The remaining characters give their actors less to work with, but all are more than adequate. They storm into the studios, crank forward the plot, and keep the spotlight on the central cast.
All are helped by James V. Thomas’s highly workable set design and some brilliant period costumes by Amber Stepanik.
Director Claire Hart-Palumbo sets a pace that belies the play’s three-act length, and she generally keeps the actors both comically theatrical but believably human. She has divined the spirt of Coward’s script and seen that it is nourished by the performances. Most importantly, she elides the play’s dated jokes and Britishisms largely lost on American audiences; she makes sure neither problem sends the play reeling.
The result is a delightful summer evening—an escape in time and place. As Houston temperatures hang in the hundreds, Main Street Theater offers a play that almost bats a cool thousand.
–Robert Donahoo, Sam Houston State University
“Present Laughter” is on stage at Main Street Theater through August 13.
