'Romantic Comedy' Don't Let The Title Fool You - Civic's Show Is Just That

'ROMANTIC COMEDY'

Don't let the title fool you — Civic's show is just that

By HARMEN MITCHELL

NEWS ARTS WRITER

“Why did they take the running boards off cars?” laments stuffy Jason Carmichael in the first act of “Romantic Comedy.” “Why did they take the elegance out of everything?”

Well, there was a darn good reason for the former, but the latter has al- REVIEW ways been pretty much a matter of taste, and Bernard Slade’s three-act tale of a 14-year love affair sublimated within the playwrighting collaboration between Carmichael and Phoebe Craddock settles - quite happily - for sophistication and wit.

That’s not only not bad, it’s rather good. The latest Ann Arbor Civic Theater production opened Wednesday night at Lydia Mendelssohn Theater with enough strengths to make it worth your while - and some very, very curious flaws.

The strengths? Easy. First, you’ve got Slade’s play, which tries to be a blend of Noel Coward, John Fowles, and Neil Simon. Slade’s mixture of urbanity, thematic self-consciousness, and blatant sentimentality builds from a jokey first act to an occasionally uproarious second and winds it all up with a third which uses more than a little drama to tie it all up -albeit a little glibly and unsatisfactorily.

But there’s a lot of fun on the way, courtesy of the cast. Jim Toler is right on target as the proudly snobbish veteran playwright Carmichael, and Wendy Susan Hiller is delightful as the shy, girlish Craddock. Stuffy characters are hard to make human, so Toler has a tough job, but unless Hiller is, in real life, shy, clumsy and most eloquent when she stammers, then she pulls off quite a feat here with that hardest thing to get right on opening night, light comedy.

Perhaps because they are underutilized and inconsistently written, Leo and Allison (John Amman and Susan Morseth), the characters’ spouses, don’t get the chance to show off that the leads do, but Ginger Moehring is perfect in what is usually the theatrical equivalent of a place holder, the crusty but loving agent, Blanche. There is also a dandy cameo by Tina Kalegias as the overheated prima donna starring in one of the duo’s shows.

Of course, the dialogue doesn’t always sparkle, and one senses that this is intentional. Any playwright will tell you that no audience can or wants to, laugh uproariously for two hours and 40 minutes (which, by the way, is how long this production runs), and things are purposely slowed down occasionally to give you a rest. As entertaining as the show is, it became a little obvious that everyone wanted a nap by the middle of the third act.

But the main problem with this production is nigh unto inexplicable. In the first act, when Phoebe turns up on Jason's wedding day to discuss the play she sent him, she is in her early 20s and he is 35. In the second act, supposedly 10 years later, both characters look, if anything, younger than when the play started. Little attempt is made to change anything in the office where they work, and nothing is done to affect the passage of time in the characters’ appearances.

Of course, when the audience heard one of the characters tell the other that it had been 10 years* between the two acts, it set off a small chain reaction of comments in the audience, which didn’t matter. In was in the predominantly quiet third act that chatting and speculation (“What’s she staying with him for?” was a typical comment) battled the coughers (it could almost have been a classical music concert) for dominance in Lydia Mendelssohn’s superb acoustics.

On the whole, most of the objections and attention to detail are at odds with the whole concept of light entertainment. For all its up-to-date language (there are some dirty words and male nudity that might shock conservative playgoers) and psychological wailing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, “Romantic Comedy” is meant to be fun. And, on the whole, it is.

ROMANTIC COMEDY ---------- ' II I III II

Ann Arbor Civic Theater presents a play by Bernard Slade. Patricia A. Rector, director; Susan Morseth, producer; P.J. Bye. assistant director; Suzanne Paster, stage manager; Gene Macario. set designer; Hans Friedrichs, costume designer; Joe Medrano. Mike Limmer. light designers; Peter Greenquist, sound designer.

Cast includes Jim Toler, Ginger Moehring, Wendy Susan Hiller. Susan Morseth. John Amman. Tina Kalegias. Performances continue at Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, tonight through Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. For ticket information and reservations, call 662-7282.