More recently, two great contemporary playwrights have taken up their satiric pens to skewer the theater, politics, professional rivalries and detective fiction, and 4th Wall Theatre in Bloomfield has mounted two of their productions back to back for an evening of great exuberance and sharp wit. The Fourth Wall by A.R. Gurney and The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard are quintessential one-act plays that pack a five-act punch that you’ll gladly take for the fun of it!
(Forgive me for not giving away too much, for I don’t want to spoil your pleasure.) On a literal level, the wall in Gurney’s title refers to the totally blank wall in Roger and Peggy’s living room, one that we can’t see because it’s facing the stage, not the audience, but one whose absolute emptiness unnerves Roger. He’s called in a friend from New York to help him convince his wife to rearrange the furniture to avoid looking at the void. But “the fourth wall” also refers to the dramatic convention that has the audience eavesdrop on the events onstage while the actors behave as though they are completely oblivious to our presence. With these two outlooks existing side by side, the characters start emoting (over)dramatically, gesturing broadly and talking about the events unfolding as though they are part of a play (e.g., entrance and exit lines, the need for a plot). The appearance of Floyd Lesser, professor of drama at a nearby college, only ramps up the points Gurney is making about the need of modern society for drama in their lives and its propensity to overplay their roles as they go about their days. That Peggy is anti-George W. Bush allows Gurney to get in some digs at the political scene of 2002, a year after 9/11. The allusions to the final scene of A Doll’s House signals that Peggy is about to break out of the role usually assigned to a docile wife and seek a new path to find herself, connect with the people she’s sure are on the other side of the “fourth wall” and make a difference in the world. (Left: Kathi Iannacone & Paul Zeller) If this sounds a bit too ponderous, no fear: director Gwen Ricks-Spencer has assembled a quartet of actors who pull off the silliness very well. Richard Colonna’s Roger wants to be a businessman, not an actor, but he postures and pontificates all around the stage in front of the “fourth wall.” He’s aided and abetted by Liz Samuel as a Desperate Housewife-like Julia, who sucks in her cheeks, struts around the stage and throws herself first at Roger, then at Floyd. As Peggy, Kathi Iannacone is less fake; she’s more a wide-eyed idealist about her ability to change the world. And Paul Zeller is fantastic as Floyd, talking to his hosts as though they are his students and critiquing their décor as though it is a set design!
Tom Stoppard also pulls absurdist shtick in his mash-up of Agatha Christie, Father Brown, Sherlock Holmes and drama critics in the hinterland (these two write for newspapers in Liverpool)! The Real Inspector Hound involves a play within a play watched by the audience and two critics who sit in a box to the side of the playing space. The hoary plot involves a killer on the loose, a stranger who appears out of nowhere, a long-lost brother who has recently returned from Canada, an ingénue, a grand lady of the manor and a cheeky maid. It’s too ridiculous to follow, let alone recount here! Stoppard’s portrayal of the two critics hit home with me; truth to tell, I saw parts of myself in them (albeit a bit magnified!) and got a good laugh just watching them.
Bill Gaudelli plays Moon as a pompous, self-absorbed, effete snob who spouts grand ideas in an elevated vocabulary that ultimately mean nothing. His colleague, Birdboot, is played with great élan by Will Lampe as a critic who is not above seducing a young actress with the promise of moving her career along through a series of positive, glowing reviews. In the play within the play, Jennifer Biederman is elegant as Lady Cynthia; Alex Thompson effectively slinks around as the sneaky stranger Simon Montjoy; Theresa Lyons is a chirpy Mrs. Drudge, who recites the stage directions as well as her dialogue; Marguerite Forrest is alternately naïve as the ingénue and furious when Birdboot overthrows her for a new love; and Todd Shumpert has a grand time maneuvering around in his wheelchair as Magnus Muldoon, Cynthia’s brother-in-law lately arrived from Canada. At the end, all hell breaks loose, the critics breath the fourth wall to become part of the play, and we are left to wonder just who is the real Inspector Hound and who is that dead body lying beneath the chaise? (Right: Todd Schumpert, Marguerite Forrest, Alex Thompson & Jennifer Biedrman) Jasmine Vogue Pai has designed terrific sets for both plays, and Brian James Grace has provided appropriate costumes for all, especially for the actors within the play of Stoppard’s piece. Nicholas Marmo’s lighting is atmospheric and spot on.
Not to sound too much like the critic Moon, The Fourth Wall and The Real Inspector Hound force us to confront our complacency about the world around us (consumerism, unilateralism, the rise of ecologism, transnationalism—whew! a heavy bunch of topics, to be sure), the rather tired conventions of crime literature beloved by many readers and the power of critics in the success and/or failure of a theatrical production.
Well, Wall/Hound runs only one more weekend at the Westminster Arts Center in Bloomfield. So get on over for a rollicking good time that will make you think! Kinda like those Greeks!
Wall/Hound will be performed Thursday and Friday at 8 PM. For information and tickets, call 973.748.9008, ext.279, or visit online at http://www.4thwalltheatre.com/shows/tickets.html.
