DOWNTOWN
NEWS
April
12, 2004
Ahmanson's Pleasant Valentine to Charming, Neurotic Acting
Dynasties
By Rob Kendt
CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
They
don't make nostalgia like they used to, and maybe that's just as well.
Case
in point: George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's star-struck 1927 ode to the lure
of the greasepaint, The Royal Family. While audiences of the time clearly understood
it to be based on the storied Drew/Barrymore acting dynasty, then still
preeminent on the American stage, it is hard to imagine this funny, sticky
valentine--now in a pleasant if trifling revival at the Ahmanson Theatre--ever
playing with the immediacy of the present tense.
However
it appeared at the time, the play's romanticized view of stage artists seems,
today, rather like an exercise in self-congratulation, though at this distance
it's hard to know precisely for what. With its broad, loving strokes and its
impromptu stump speeches about the theatrical calling, The Royal Family often plays like a
backstage bedtime story, to be read aloud to Broadway babies as they drift off
to dreams of endless applause and bundles of bouquets.
In the absence of our firsthand knowledge of stage
royalty--we no longer have any in this country, if we ever truly did--the
show's self-reflecting glow settles on the troupers who fill the roles in the
current production, which is why it takes a certain serendipity in casting for
it to be worth mounting at all.
By that standard, director Tom Moore's production is a
success, starting at the top with Marian Seldes as Fanny Cavendish, the
family's elder stateswoman, who graciously dotes on her progeny's careers while
quietly pining for her own return to the stage after a long illness. Seldes is
a serenely queenly presence with a crown of gray tresses and angular features
that suggest a Hirschfeld drawing come to life, and colored by Erte: She's
dressed by costumer Robert Blackman in a series of flowing, silky ensembles
that evoke Eqyptian pajamas.
As her fiery daughter Julie, at the peak of her career
but having mid-life doubts about the "real" life the stage has kept
her from, Kate Mulgrew is well cast but not content to rest on that. With a
raspy voice that manages to crack in a variety of registers and lock jawed
diction so thick it almost becomes a speech impediment, Mulgrew gives an antic,
mercurial performance that only settles into its own at the end of Act Two.
It is here that Julie finally loses it and delivers a
comic aria of recrimination, verging on mad, that draws the show's main
conflict in thick lines: Between the mayhem of a theatrical household that's
always "on" and an existence defined by domesticity, between the
Cavendishes' unruly dynasty and a more typical version of family values, Julie
cries out for the imagined comforts of security, dignity, modesty--though,
naturally, with a protest-too-much vigor that belies her words.
This scene highlights one of Moore's more knowing running
gags, that these playhouse creatures are never more over-the-top dramatic than
when they're renouncing the actor's life. Whether it's the torrentially
capricious Tony, a spoiled, swashbuckling cad modeled on John Barrymore, and
played with winning, winking savoir faire by Daniel Gerroll; or their harrumphing
manager, Oscar (George S. Irving), who gives the evening's signature pep talks
amid his kvelling about the vagaries of show business; or the reluctant new
ingenue, Julie's daughter Gwen (Melinda Page Hamilton), who just can't imagine
she'll ever tire of her stockbroker fiance, Perry (Robert L. Devaney).
There's
a faint feminist strain here, courtesy of co-writer Ferber. An elegiac scene
with the three generations of Cavendish women, with Fanny offering a sort of
sense-memory demonstration of her pre-show rituals, is practically a
having-it-all primer; though in this rosy backstage view, in which no serious
dysfunction, avarice, jealousy, or economic worry intrudes, there seems
precious little at stake in the choice of career vs. family.
This
sort of fantasy can be irresistible, even empowering, for creative types, which
is one reason why reviving this play, particularly in Los Angeles, is a swell
enough idea, and why this new production deserves to be a modest local hit.
It
doesn't hurt, of course, that the production is also matter-of-factly sumptuous:
Douglas W. Schmidt's capacious two-story set, with its curving staircase and
high-flying curtains, gives the place an affectionately homegrown staginess.
And mention must be made
of a quintet of scruffy scene stealers--five well-behaved dogs, trained by
William Berloni, whose entrances, exits, and reassuring presence through a
number of scenes are among the show's clearest signals of the way domestic
harmony can prevail among even the most motley menagerie.