Playwright: Ferenc Molnár,
adapted by P.G. Wodehouse
At: Borealis Theatre Company at Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont Ave.
Phone: (773) 327-5252; $18.50
Runs through: Sept. 28
The model for western playwrights throughout the 19th century was the 'well-made' play popularized circa 1825 by Eugéne Scribe and Victorien Sardou. Its principles, whether employed for drama or comedy, dictated a relentless emphasis on plot, with circumstances rather than temperament guiding the characters' actions. This rational, but undeniably artificial, approach to human experience soon invited widespread parody (by George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, among others)
Ferenc Molnár's Spiel Im Schloss, adapted in 1926 by P.G. Wodehouse as The Play's The Thing, mocks the form even as it mimics its conventions: Mssrs. Turai and Mansky are successful authors currently collaborating on an operetta with Albert, a talented young composer engaged to star diva Mlle. Ilona, whose presence in their show guarantees them a hit. But one night, in a hotel boasting thin walls, the lady is overheard bestowing a farewell smooch on her former paramour—the lecherous and very married matinee idol, Almady—and it's up to the inventive Turai to rescue the romance and their project.
Once the rescue operation kicks into motion, we cheer it on with gleeful enthusiasm. The difficulty lies in the set-up, however: Turai may comment on the dissimilarities between life and drama, excising copious amounts of exposition by declaring, 'Wouldn't it be simpler if we were to cut out all that other stuff and just introduce ourselves?'—after which he and his comrades proceed to do so. But the text as written still requires characters to herald each revelation with a series of preambles that eventually exhaust the actors' catalogue of arch, ironic, we're-doing-this-on-purpose deliveries, forcing them to play these plodding passages straight.
The Borealis company gives it a game try, nevertheless. The Character Men—director Jeff Baumgartner's Turai, Leo J. Harmon's Mansky, John Westby's Almady and Phil Carlin's butler Dwornicheck (Wodehouse did the adaptation, remember?)—come off better than the Juveniles, though Glenn W. Proud has some nice moments as the passionate Albert. Too, the sparse audience on the night I attended (9/11, you know) may have had an enervating effect on the performance, making for a temporary let-down of the side.