Not Mad Enough
People's Branch Theatre's season closer suffers from some weak staging and ill-advised casting
by Martin Brady
The Madwoman of Chaillot
Presented by People's Branch Theatre
Through June 18 at Belcourt Theatre
The final production of People's Branch Theatre's 2004-05 season, The Madwoman of Chaillot is a fairly ambitious affair. Including uncredited cast members, there are about 15 players onstage, some of them doubling up on roles to help swell the Parisian city scenes. PBT serves up a representative version of Jean Giraudoux's verbose satire, which pits the poor and good vs. the rich and evil. Ultimately, it plays out as a marginal evening of theater, primarily because the promise of Act 1's charm and humor is sabotaged by Act 2's lengthy first scene, which falls flat due to static staging and overripe acting.
The play's opening tableau, featuring the corporate bad guys (Timothy Orr Fudge, David Berry, Lane Wright), contains the right snap and bite to elicit laughs and move the story ahead. Fudge is rapaciously funny and in command; later, as the vagabonds who hang around an outdoor cafe begin to impinge on his space, we get some lively performances from Phil Perry-Dixon, Mary Tanner Bailey, Carey Kotsionis, Sam Whited and Wesley Paine. The sly setup is enjoyable, and it's supported well enough by Don Griffiths' cartoonish set and Sandra Payne's quaint costumes.
Act 2 finds the good guys scheming to do away with the money-hungry miscreants, who come to include figures from government, industry and the press. There are certainly laughs here, and the playwright's hopeful message and optimistic bon mots occasionally hit the mark. Yet one wishes that director Matthew Carlton had glided his cast through the author's words with more élan. When the production falters, it's because the audience has to work too hard to grasp the verbal nuance, a situation exacerbated by dullish pacing.
David Wilkerson, one of Nashville's more underrated actors, seems to be on the same page as the French author; as the young love interest Pierre and later as the Sewer King, he declaims clearly and comically. Jennifer Jewell provides a credible performance in the title role, mixing elements of elegant Southern belle with the vocal patterns of Katharine Hepburn (who played this role in Bryan Forbes' all-star 1969 feature film). It's a fairly liquid turn, and Jewell's physical presence is sufficient to hold the play together. Yet there's nothing that might be considered innovative in her approach to Countess Aurelia; it's a straightforward, no-surprises portrayal.
Director Carlton dabbles in cross-casting—women as men (Bailey and Denice Hicks), man as woman (Perry-Dixon)—which raises the question: why? Presumably, to get maximum value out of a cast that's not large enough to stage this play otherwise. Bailey fares well as Dr. Jadin in the early going, but Perry-Dixon as Mme. Gabrielle in Act 2 gives us the obligatory sight gag but not much else; he spends too much time looking like a character out of a bad TV drag sketch. The casting of Hicks in the critical role of the Ragpicker, on the other hand, seems gratuitous, since she's not doubling up on other roles. In the past, Hicks has shown the versatility to pull this kind of thing off, but her presence only blurs the character's sexual boundaries. She does her impish best to infuse life into the role, plays her guitar adequately and leads the cast through the "Mazurka de la Vie" (composed by Carlton). While injecting much-needed energy into the proceedings, that signature musical moment is, alas, even more tattered than the motley crew of Frenchmen who gamely try to pull it off.
The show closes to the strains of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love," complete with its "La Marseillaise" intro. There's logic in this choice, but, like much of the second act, it too seems forced.
This Madwoman definitely has some spirit, but when it loses momentum, it's a nightlong struggle to get it back.
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