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Sunday, December 9, 2012

REVIEW: “TRELAWNY OF THE WELLS” @ STNJ THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT!

Finding the perfect gift for a loved one is a real chore for most of us around the holidays. We worry about fit, appropriateness, color, price. If you are the artistic director of a theater company, selecting a play for the holiday season can be an even bigger headache. Do you go with the "tried and true," do you give your audiences something you've done before that proved successful, or do you select an unfamiliar play and so stretch the theatergoer's imagination?

Bonnie J. Monte has faced this conundrum every year during her 22-year tenure as the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and each time she has come up a winner! For the final production of the theater's fiftieth season, she reached into her bag of plays and came up with Trelawny of the Wells, a little-known comedy about the theater by Arthur Wing Pinero, in a sparkling production that provides the perfect gift for the STNJ audiences!

Trelawny_IMG_4853Combining just the right amount of froth and substance, Trelawny of the Wells recounts the bump-up between melodrama—the rage in London at the time— and realistic drama in the 1890s English theater scene. The Trelawny of the title is Rose Trelawny, the "best juvenile lady of Wells," Wells being the famous Sadler Wells Theatre. A popular star of melodrama (and the daughter of actors), Rose has decided to forsake her career to wed Arthur Gowan, a callow, youthful "swell" who is the grandson of Sir William Gowan, a Vice Chancellor in the British government. To prepare for her new life and status, Rose is forced to live with Sir William and his sister Miss Trafalgar Gowan (yes, that's her name) in their posh home in Cavendish Square, where they subject her to a multitude of rules about decorum, all of which make for a very boring existence and amount to mental torture. When Rose realizes how repressed and stiff this dreary existence is and, breaking her engagement, returns to her theatrical life and the warmth of the footlights. Unfortunately, the experience has ruined her for melodrama, and she is let go by the theater. An unexpected source of funding for a new theater is Rose's salvation, much to the audience's delight. (Above, Rose’s retirement dinner and farewell)

Director Bonnie Monte's love for this play is evident throughout, from the set design to the performances of the fine group of actors she has assembled. Because this is a comedy, timing is very important, and because the play concerns melodrama, over-acting and declamation are de rigueur! The actors are given full license to chew up the scenery, but Monte's direction enables them to reveal their humanity and vulnerabilities lurking beneath the overarching egos they display in public. Too, the cast is to be commended for the convincing British accents they maintain throughout the entire play!

Trelawny_IMG_4739Nisi Sturgis's Rose(right, with Jason Coughtry) is a prime example of the yearning for a different kind of theater, one that would tax her talent in new ways. Adorable, she's the quintessential ingénue, a free-spirited "gypsy" filled with warmth and kindness. Her palpable frustration at being kept like a caged bird at the Dower residence is relieved by her spot-on impersonations of Sir William behind his back ("Are there no chairs here?" he asks when he finds her sitting on the floor). And when she returns to the theater, her subdued demeanor is ample proof of how her experience with the upper class has transformed her into a more subdued, ladylike human being. unfit for her previous roles. As her beau Arthur, Jason Coughtry is appropriately dim and inarticulate, certainly no match for Rose's theatrical world. His toast at her retirement dinner is hilarious (they finally tell him to sit down), and his inability to stand up to his grandfather maddening. One wonders what Rose saw in this young man other than his adoration, money and status. It's a thankless role, but Coughtry manages to make Arthur rather lovable if irritating.

That grandfather is played by the magnificent Edmond Genest, a 17-season veteran of STNJ. Imperious, pompous, snobbish, he mangles the English language with his British accent, pronouncing "you" as "ye" and "oblige" as "obleeje." He's a real tyrant, not permitting Rose to sing or even sneeze while she is in his house, yet a confession he makes to her about his youthful love of the theater tempers our exasperation with his hoity-toity demeanor. The fourth character in this business is Tom Wrench, a ten-year veteran of the Wells (playing mostly utility parts) who has been writing realistic plays on the side while pining for Rose. John Patrick Hayden's great comic timing gives his wisecracks a special zing, while his natural manner is the perfect foil for the rest of the company (especially the actors) who ham it up even when they are not onstage! He gets to do his thing in the final act where he has to control the holdovers from melodrama who would sabotage his production. Dressed in a three-piece suit, Hayden's Wrench is a man come into his own, and we don't doubt he'll be successful. (below right)

Trelawny_IMG_5193The remaining characters often double up on roles, much to the audience's merriment. Caralyn Kozlowski is regal as Imogen Parrott, late of the Wells and now star of the Olympic Theatre, who manages to sweep into every scene she's in with authority and glamour. She especially comes into her comedic own in the final scene where she struggles with Imogen's melodramatic tendencies to mixed, and very funny, effect. John FitzGibbon is an avuncular James Telfer, paterfamilias and owner of the actors' lodging house, and as Charles, a sly butler to the Gowan family. Elizabeth Shepherd is Telfer's grand dame of an actress wife (she's played 18 queens in various plays and sure projects majesty whenever she speaks). The actors, all of whom continue to orate and grandly gesture even when offstage, include Trelawny_IMG_4648John Barker as "serious" leading man Ferdinand Gadd (above, pounding his hat); Rachel Fox as the flibberty-gibbet Avonia Bunn (above, left center); and Connor Carew as the company clown Augustus Colpoys, ever the cut-up and mostly annoying. He also plays O'Dwyer, the stage manager of Wrench's play, a man who has to be restrained from taking over the proceedings. Jennifer Harmon (right) does double duty as the lodging's housekeeper Mrs. Mossop and as a hilarious Trafalgar Gowan, spinster great-aunt to the wimpy Arthur. And Matt Sullivan deserves kudos for his roles as the bumbling butler Ablett, (right) the stuffy Capt. De Foenix and the actor Mr. Denzil, who has a hard time adapting to the new drama.

Monte and Anita Tripathi Easterling have transformed the STNJ stage into proper Victorian drawing rooms and a theater stage, with the actors performing much if not all of the furniture moving and setting of props. It's enchanting to watch the conversion! Hugh Hanson's costumes further enhance the illusion of the play's time and place.

I confess that I had never seen (or even read) Trelawny of the Wells before last night's performance. I didn't even Google the play, so I went to see it "cold." That ignorance made my experience all the more delicious. "Life upon the wicked stage ain't nothin' for a girl," the lyrics say, but life in a posh drawing room with only old folks for company can be soul deadening. Luckily, Rose Trelawny is rescued from both alternatives by a new form of theater, for which we can be grateful today. Bonnie Monte and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey have selected the perfect gift for the audiences of the last production of their Jubilee season. Bravo!

Trelawny of the Wells will be performed on the F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre Main Stage, 36 Madison Avenue, Madison (on the campus of Drew University), through December 30th. For information and tickets, call the box office at 973.408.5600 or visit online at www.ShakespeareNJ.org.