Civic's 'Pimpernel' Disappoints

Civic's 'Pimpernel' disappoints

STAGE REVIEW

Would-be farce can't seem to take flight

BY CHRISTOPHER POTTER

News Arts Writer

Ann Arbor Civic Theatre’s “The Scarlet Pimpernel” offers a great curtain-raiser: A full-scale scaffold and guillotine dominate the Towsley Auditorium stage in sinister half-light, while off-stage a Parisian mob’s bellowings for blood cacopho-nously resound.

...and resound. Though above the roar one hears the shuddery slide and thud of the guillotine at work, the blade remains undropped and unmanned. One begins to wonder whether this immense killing machine is lost in time and space, the screams mere echoes from the past.

By the time the Parisian citizenry does tramp onstage and
French aristocrats commence losing their heads with disquieting realism, the suspense generated at scene’s opening has dissipated in the gap separating prelude and action. So goes most of Ann Arbor Civic’s debut production at Washtenaw Community College. Envisioned as a zippy, campy melodrama circa 1792 by director Jimmy Dee Arnold, “Pimpernel” slogs along, neither fast nor funny.

For those who never read Baroness Orczy’s play (adapted by Beverley Cross), the Pimpernel is Sir Percy Blakeney (Richard Casto), a high-born Britisher who along with fellow adventurers leads daring raids into France to rescue doomed aristocrats and smuggle them to England. Back home Percy’s the epitome of an upper-crust fop, the better to disguise his true character and activities.

Casto delivers a deft performance, all empty-headed idleness as Sir Percy and all idealistic business as the Pimpernel.

Alexandra E. Berneis is fine as his French wife Marguerite, whose enigmatic loyalties place her constantly under suspicion, and Jon Elliott is ghoulishly funny as a shambling innkeeper.

Otherwise AACT’s large cast remains too bland to play the show for farce, too cartoonish to play it seriously. Tom Underwood lends French agent Chau-velin a Boris Badunov/Snidely Whiplash shtick that swiftly pales; ditto Kent Klausner’s giggling Prince of Wales. Almost every scene should be speedier, and though the pace picks up in Act II, the onstage antics seem disconnected: A long chase sequence (set to music) registers as nothing more than a vague homage to “Laugh-In.” At least that show was funny.

“The Scarlet Pimpernel" continues at 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Towsley Auditorium on the WCC campus, 4800 E. Huron River Drive. For reservations call (734)971-2228.