 | ||
 |
The Star Ledger "Four by Four" actually should be titled "Four by Four by Four." For while the East Lynne Theatre Company of Cape May is doing four one-act plays by four different playwrights, the "purveyor of 19th century American theatricals," as the troupe bills itself, has a quartet of talented performers on hand to enact them. Director Gayle Stahlhuth was inspired when she chose "Bianca," by Louisa May Alcott. Her two performers, Dawn Harvey and Alison J. Murphy, say up front that Louisa May and her sister, Anna, whiled away many pleasant hours by pretending to be actors in plays. We then see what might have happened if the sisters tried out Louisa May's newest script in their bedroom. Each has to double in this role — and they have a delightful time. Harvey is Bianca, the lovely lass pursed by her true love Adelbert (Murphy) and the ne'er do well Rodolpho (also Murphy). It's done as flat-out melodrama, with Harvey lifting a hand to her forehead and proclaiming she would never betray Adelbert. She has a lovely, open-faced earnestness. William Dean Howell's "The Smoking Car" is next, bringing the audience back to an era when people routinely smoked on trains. Edward Roberts (Mark Edward Lang) will soon be smoking in another way: doing a slow burn after he is approached by a motor-mouth commuter (Harvey). Would he mind just watching her infant in swaddling clothes while she goes out to get her suitcase? The amusement starts when Ed's friend, Willis, boards the train, and puts the idea in Ed's head that the woman doesn't intend to reclaim her baby. Damon Bonetti is marvelous as Willis (aka Mr. Worst-Case Scenario). Lang is most entertaining as Ed, the milquetoast who's always politely saying things like, "I'm sure I don't know." Funniest of all is Harvey as the self-absorbed chatterbox, who is oblivious to the fact that she's imposing. She just expects that everyone who meets her is dying to help. After this play, Lang turns his acting skills to the title role of William Gillette's "The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes" and shows the right imperious austerity the moment the lights come up. And what is his "painful predicament"? The hint comes as the maid (Harvey) enters and says, "There's a woman outside who wants to see you." (As we all know, Holmes does not suffer women gladly.) He'll have a harder time with this one, too, because Murphy plays her as the proverbial bull in the china shop, banging into this table and that lamp (bad news for Holmes' Stradivarius). As Harvey did in the previous play, Murphy portrays an all-too-loquacious sort whose incessant monologue drives Holmes to distraction. A neat, O, Henry-like ending solves the (mental) case for Holmes. The evening concludes with Elmer Rice's "The Passing of Chow-Chow," in which Mrs. Standish (Harvey) complains to her lawyer (Lang) about her husband. He hasn't been unfaithful or duplicitous, but he can't stand her beloved dog — and that, she reasons, is grounds for divorce. Harvey's best moment comes when she tells how her husband frightened poor Chow-Chow by pretending to be rabid, only off-handedly mentioning that he acted this way after the bitch bit him. No sooner does she leave than Mr. Standish (Bonetti) appears. He, too, needs a lawyer's services because he's decided to divorce his wife. Chow-Chow is the culprit. Mr. Standish is a painter, and he will not endure chewed-up brushes any longer. He's hilarious as he relates that his first assumption was that the rats gnawed them: "I hope the rats will forgive me when I said that about them." Ah, life was more genteel then. While the sets at East Lynne are always modest, everyone is handsomely bedecked in what looks to be expensive Victoriana. "Four by Four" is as pleasant as the breeze that comes off the nearby Atlantic. |
 |
 | ||
