TWICE AROUND

Kelly Jakiel and Lou Colaiacovo in Twice Around.

Twice Around, a new comedy by Darryl Schneider, has a lot going for it. The playwright has a gift for engaging comic dialogue and has created four appealing characters who walk the line between two and three dimensions with clever wit and insight. In addition, the production at the Road Less Traveled theater has been populated with an uncommonly strong cast featuring two of the city’s most engaging ingénues, Kelly Jakiel as Beth and Nicole Cimato as Coco, paired with two of our most able leading men, Louis Colaiacovo as Kevin and Thomas LaChiusa as Ernie. The foursome ably gambols through a game of romantic mixed doubles.

In a familiar romantic setup, Kevin lusts for Beth from afar. He takes up jogging in order to pursue her, and when he finally devises a scheme to catch her, he is faced with two complications. First, she remembers him as a childhood friend. Second, she’s married.

Not to worry, her marriage to obnoxious Ernie, an almost golf pro, is precarious enough to provide hope. And sexy Coco, who is light on psychological complexity but heavy on French accent, is near at hand to shake things up.

To say that the script is sprawling and decidedly overwritten is not to condemn the work entirely. Overwriting is the hallmark of most original productions. It takes a few audiences for the playwright and director to be able to see where the chaff clings to the wheat—or in this case, where the wrapper sticks to the milk chocolate. But in addition to the virtues of the writing and an able cast, Twice Around benefits from the direction of Doug Weyand, which is sharply focused and full of playful invention. His musical choices enrich the comic antics of the play, and his sense of physical comedy, from the series of comic crossovers that begin the piece to a hilarious slow-motion finish, are sheer delight.

The script is structured as a series of comic sketches that move the plot along. Each sketch could stand alone, but as we work our way through the inevitable variations of relationships, a deadly predictability sets in. In fact, during intermission I jotted down the following note: “Kevin ends up with Beth; Ernie ends up with Coco; Beth sings in her final scene.” No one present would call me clairvoyant. With a full act to go, we needed another twist (or several) to sustain us on the path to this all too inevitable conclusion.

Still, Schneider’s sense of screwball comedy is adept and evident in such flourishes as having the jealous husband guard his turf by hitting his assumed rival with skillfully aimed golf balls. Or the delightful moment when Coco finds a $16,000 Cartier diamond ring in Kevin’s pocket and naturally jumps to a conclusion that she will soon regret. Or when that same ring makes an unlikely reappearance at precisely the right comic moment. These are inspired flights of comic fancy that deserve a more streamlined presentation.

The acting quartet assays the material with enthusiasm and irresistible charm. Colaiacovo adds to his litany of beleaguered nice guys that span from Bat Boy, to Doubt, to Southern Baptist Sissies. LaChiusa derives charm from a total jerk. Cimato provides deranged hilarity as the all too alluring Coco. And Kelly Jakiel is, as always, incandescent.

The production has been provided with a handsome and versatile set by Ron Schwartz whose fine designs seem to be dominating this season.

Appropriately, this valentine of a comedy runs through February 15.

Louis Napoleon in Ah Wilderness!

AH, WILDERNESS!

It is often observed that Eugene O’Neill never stayed with any one dramatic style long enough to become its true master. And yet, through the power of his theatrical vision, he ignited American drama and produced an astoundingly versatile range of plays. He experimented his way though our nation’s first important tragic drama, through expressionistic allegories and revisions of the ancient Greek classics. Still among the many plays he wrote in his long and remarkable career, there is only one lone comedy, Ah, Wilderness!

The Irish Classical Theatre company has an understandable affinity for Irish American O’Neill. They’ve taken on his expressionistic Emperor Jones and his companion odes to gloom and disillusionment, A Moon for the Misbegotten and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. With Ah, Wilderness! the company happily makes its most successful foray into O’Neill territory yet with a production that is tremendously appealing and smart, despite uneven acting.

Set on the Fourth of July in 1906, the play centers on the coming of age of 17-year-old Richard, who sees himself as a poet and a radical and uses the occasion of the summer holiday for an adolescent rebellion punctuated by a misunderstanding with his life’s first sweetheart. Everything that ensues is essentially innocent, but thrown into the frenzy of high drama when Richard’s mother, Essie, exerts her parental concern.

While Ah, Wilderness! is unique among O’Neill’s works for its comic tone, it does take us to familiar O’Neill territory. Here we find ourselves in the same Irish-American enclave of small-town Connecticut that provides the settings for Long Day’s Journey Into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Even the characters are familiar. Uncle Sid, like Jamie Tyrone, wastes himself in alcohol, gambling, and women of easy virtue. Young Richard, like Edmund in Long Day’s Journey, reads the decadent poets and yearns for his intellectual freedom. (The play’s title is borrowed from Edward FitzGerald’s collection of translated Persian poems, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, one of Richard’s favorite books).

But here we do not find a family in torment. Human imperfection is a source of endearment in this play, rather than of ruin. In Ah, Wilderness!, love endures and prevails, and everyone ends happily.

To focus on the positive in the very satisfying ICTC production, young Louis Napoleon makes a wonderfully confident debut as Richard. He plays the role with a marvelous mixture of dire earnestness and boyish naïveté, whether spouting poetry and politics intended to shock his parents, or flailing in a barroom, a victim of his own inexperience with booze.

As his parents, Nat and Essie Miller, Dan Walker and Kelli Bocock-Natale, exude equal and ample doses of parental affection and anxiety, in roles I once saw played by those definitive interpreters of O’Neill’s work, Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst. The warm banter between the two vividly recalls devoted married couples in all our families, and while in her speech Bocock-Natale’s Essie inexplicably seems to hail from the Pine Tree State of Maine, both pleasingly create characters that are simultaneously classic comic types and very real.

Kristen Tripp Kelley gives a superb performance as Nat’s spinster sister, Aunt Lily. Looking refined and lovely in period clothes and hairstyle, she projects motherly love as a woman who will never know true romance or motherhood. It is a beautiful portrayal and adds a great deal to the substance of this production.

Andrea Andolina successfully creates a classic O’Neill type in the role of Belle, the pretty prostitute who has her standards and her dignity. Andolina provides comic verve to the plot’s most dicey complication without ever going over the top. It is a nicely contoured performance.

Greg Natale’s direction keeps the production’s uneven elements in admirable balance, allowing its strengths to dominate and its failings to be forgiven. He maintains an even pace and tone, and make effective use of the circular stage at the Andrews Theatre. The beauty of the production is amplified by Lynne Koscielniak’s handsome and economical set, Brian Cavanagh’s lighting, Tom Makar’s sound design, and especially by Kate E. Palame’s highly effective period costumes.