Playwright: George Bernard Shaw
At: Timeline Theatre at Baird Hall in the United Church of Christ, 615 W. Wellington
Phone: 773-281-8463; $25
Runs through: July 1
When your characters sport such connotative names as 'Cokane,' 'Lickcheese' and 'Sartorius,' even if the author is George Bernard Shaw, you're already halfway to Etherege and Congreve, so why not take it the rest of the way? Twist up the ruthless Sartorius' mane to resemble a coxcomb like a Belgian rooster's. Lace his spoiled daughter into a bodice exposing as much bosom as an Elizabethan barmaid. Bring on the obsequious Lickcheese garbed shabbily as a Dickens beggar and, after his fortunes change, give him a sumptuous overcoat trimmed in what looks to be Yeti fur. Instruct the actors to play their material as High Artifice, replete with 'hmms,' 'haws,' 'ahems,' gasps, grimaces, tics and twitches.
Well, Shaw did assign the subtitle 'an original didactic realistic play' to his parody of the 'well-made' drama in vogue at the time. Or maybe Timeline director Kevin Fox felt that the discussions in Widowers' Houses, begun in 1885 and finished in 1892, still cut too close to our world today, necessitating a modicum of stylistic distance. Certainly, an economy that promotes exploitation of one's subordinates, whether reflected in slum-lords providing substandard housing to the poor or landed gentry mortgaging their properties to industrial barons, resonates with our own experience of 'eminent domain' seizures, low-cost residence shortages and the increasing prevalence of homeless citizens.
But if this interpretation sometime teeters on the edge of clownish farce—Gilbert and Sullivan without the songs—it scores points for consistency of tone and quality of execution. A cast of off-Loop regulars revel in their larger-than-life personae: David Parkes' Sartorius all but coils and hisses when threatened, Kathy Logelin's Miss Sartorius manhandles the servants like a fishwife disciplining sluggish apprentices and Mark Richard emerges as the quintessential prototype of the modern spin doctor. Contributing a score of ticklish incidental music, albeit more reminiscent of the 1920s than the 1890s, is the trio of Andrew Hansen on piano, Colleen Corning on clarinet and Justin Amolsch on French horn.
'The love of money is the root of all evil!' a character declares piously, only to be rebutted, 'Yes, and we'd all like to have the tree growing in our garden!' The wholly contrived resolution by which the lovers are permitted to marry for love—after receiving assurance that their union will prove profitable for everyone but the wretches at the bottom of the economic chain—only serves to highlight the dilemma faced by Shaw's capitalistic society, and ours, too.