LOS ANGELES TIMES
October 15, 2003
THEATER REVIEW
A Noise Within strikes the
right tone with Moliere's play about greed, wisely shifting the focus from a
pointless tale to the gags.
by Rob Kendt
Some actors can go for the obvious laugh and get it, no questions
asked; others go broad and belly-flop big-time. At times Mark Bramhall seems to
be doing both as Harpagon, the title character of "The Miser" at A
Noise Within. Hollow-cheeked, beady-eyed and bony, with a shock of white hair
and a billy-goat beard, Bramhall gives the kind of go-for-broke performance--broad
yet somehow dry, wild but frosty--that soars the more he flails, and makes us
cringe as much as laugh.
That's about the right tone, actually, for Moliere's grasping
geezer, who gets at least as much perverse pleasure from denying his fortune to
others as from the fortune itself. Bramhall's Harpagon isn't what you'd call
moving or sympathetic, exactly, but when he shrieks, "My beloved!" at
the loss of a hidden treasure, he suggests the soul-warping avarice of a Gollum
more than the quaint stinginess of a Jack Benny.
Apart from a series of riffs on the old man's extravagant greed
and pettiness, though, there isn't much to "The Miser," plot-wise or
point-wise.
It's a magpie makeshift of machinations and misunderstandings
that's about as substantive as a sitcom flashback episode.
The good news is that David Chambers' colloquial adaptation
(originally for South Coast Rep in 1993) and Craig Belknap's deft direction,
which sets the action in 1920s Paris, concentrate on the play's gags, not its
throwaway plot, giving us a wised up if not necessarily wiser
"Miser." The wit extends to the production design: Price tags dangle
from Harpagon's unsettled furniture, even from a pair of snifters, and his digs
have the ragtag grandeur of a dusty storehouse, with a stunning wall-size Klimt
reproduction as the backdrop of Trefoni Michael Rizzi's set. Alex Jaeger's
costumes strike a sleek, subtle monochrome.
Similarly attractive but less convincing are the quartet of
romantic leads whose marriage plans are threatened by Harpagon's schemes. Of
the four, only Danya Solomon, as Harpagon's daughter Elise, makes more of her
fluttery ingenue than a simp; constantly shushed and pushed aside, Solomon
conveys more by scrunching her flustered brow than her young peers do with all
their earnest line readings.
Meanwhile seasoned troupers such as Donald Sage Mackay, William
Dennis Hunt, Mitchell Edmonds and Mary Boucher walk away neatly with their
scenes. As a sycophantic servant, Timothy Landfield fusses and fumes a bit too
much for his laughs, but he does get them.
The same could be said of this hard-working "Miser," a
show that is no spendthrift in its eagerness to please. It may signify very
little, but there's undeniable relish in its strutting and fretting.
*
'The Miser'
Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale
When: Thursdays, Nov. 7, Nov. 20, 8 p.m.; Fridays, Oct. 17, Nov.
7, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, Oct. 18, Nov. 8, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, Nov. 16, Dec. 7,
2 and 7 p.m.
Ends: Dec. 7
Price: $20-$40
Contact: (818) 240-0910, Ext. 1
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes