Georgia Ensemble Theatre in Roswell opens its 20th anniversary season with a delightful, old-fashioned romp that summons the ghosts of Noel Coward, Harpo Marx, Gertrude Lawrence and Alexander Woollcott, the notoriously cranky New Yorker critic and Algonquin wit.
Playwrights Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman borrowed the indelible, larger-than-life characters of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” from their own milieu. It may be a sign of progress that the American theater doesn’t produce such long-winded and populous plays as this anymore. But in resurrecting this 1939 antique, which recalls Moliere’s “The Imaginary Invalid” and anticipates Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off,” Georgia Ensemble artistic director Robert J. Farley luxuriates in the trappings of zany excess and delivers a handful of magnificent cameo appearances by some superb comedic actors. (Thank you, Shelly McCook, Shannon Eubanks and Larry Davis.)
When Woollcott doppelganger Sheridan Whiteside (Allan Edwards) slips on a patch of ice while visiting a rich but common Ohio family that he sees as the epitome of provincial, the wheelchair-bound terror instigates a roundelay of hookups, breakups, insults, practical jokes and penguins. Petty jealousies and dubious infatuations are the operative motives here, and Whiteside manipulates a cluster of nurses, secretaries, newspaper reporters and daffy old spinsters like puppets on a proverbial string.
There is much fun to be had here, much gnashing of scenery, much gaiety of phrase, much silly buffoonery. The show, with a titanic-size ensemble of 23, clocks in at almost three hours. Fortunately, when the energy lags, there’s always another outsize personality waiting in the wings.
Wendy Melkonian (as Whiteside’s secretary Maggie Cutler) smartly calibrates her performance; as Maggie sows mischief, Melkonian gets better and better. McCook, as the kooky sister of Whiteside’s accidental host, draws laughs without uttering a syllable. She’s hysterical. Davis, as the character based on Coward, is wonderfully over the top from start to finish. He only appears in one long scene, but it’s a real lulu.
Alas, the weak link here is Edwards — a perfectly solid player who seems almost too nice to convey the vicious streak that is the essence of Whiteside. Sometimes just being loud and blustery isn’t enough. Edwards might do with a little more variety in his attack.
On the design end, Jamie Bullins creates a Hollywood-scale set, and Sara Olson provides costumes to match — glamour on a budget.
We’ll finish by saying it’s nice to see this dinosaur of a play done on a lavish scale, a tribute to an age when giants roamed the stage and gobbled up innocent victims for pure sport. Somehow Kaufman and Hart’s language seems both thoroughly modern and thoroughly creaky all at once.
Theater review
“The Man Who Came to Dinner”
Grade: B-
7:30 p.m. Wednesdays. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 4 p.m. Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Sept. 23. $23-$33. Georgia Ensemble Theatre, Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. 770-641-1620, get.org
Bottom line: A study in dated drollery.
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