Posted on: Wednesday, February 16, 2005
STAGE REVIEW
'Century' noisy ride to nowhere
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic
It feels like most of the passengers have gotten off to push the locomotive in the production of "Twentieth Century," now at Diamond Head Theatre.
Brad Goda In addition to the original version, the show has been a movie, a musical and a recent Broadway revival. At DHT, it's a laborious farce.
It's difficult to do farce well. It's more than simply fast talking, big gestures and door slamming. Co-directed at DHT by Bill Ogilvie and James MacArthur, son of the playwright, the cast simply leans hard on the accelerator pedal for two full acts. One supposes that it's as exhausting for them as it is for the audience.
To add injury to the fatiguing tone, the production budget gives us flat and boxy parlor cars instead of luxury art deco, and costumes that make the men look dingy and the women look horsy.
• 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 27 • Diamond Head Theatre • $12-$42 • 733-0274 or Web site Oscar Jaffe (Dennis Proulx) is the producer looking for one big hit. Lily Garland (Brenda Lee Hillebrenner) is the Hollywood star that Jaffe made out of a chorus girl.
During their 20-hour trip, he must persuade her to star as Mary Magdalene in his Broadway version of the Obergammerau Passion Play. This might be funny. It might also be a romance.
But for two acts, Proulx plays the blowhard and Hillebrenner plays the brassy diva. Both work hard, but turn in protracted, one-note performances — all honking without melody. While the style is tiresome, at least it is consistent.
Oscar has a couple of scrubby henchmen, O'Malley (David Farmer) and Webb (Tom Holowach), who slither around the action and give it texture without a real boost. Lily is accompanied by a boyfriend (Gene DeFrancis) who is basically a stiff board.
Curiously, it's the supporting eccentric characters giving the play its only variety and change of pace — perhaps because none of them shout.
Earll Kingston plays a delightfully happy rodent of a man who leads the passengers on a merry chase by pasting "repent" stickers on every flat surface. Jim Hesse and Ricky Galius are a couple of quaint beer-stein Germans with Passion Play experience.
John Hunt's talents are wasted on the conductor role.
"Twentieth Century" plays as a history piece, but lacks the bounce to make it instinctively funny or romantic. Even with all the rushing, it's a long and tiresome ride.
The Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur 1932 comedy takes place on a train between Chicago and New York while a floundering Broadway producer tries to win back the actress he has made a star.
Dennis Proulx is Oscar Jaffe who tries hard to persuade Lily Garland, played by Brenda Lee Hillebrenner, to appear in his passion play.
With the cast charging toward the finish line from the opening curtain, even the skimpy plot seems to get lost in the rush.
'TWENTIETH CENTURY'
