Dark Farce

THEATER REVIEWS: At This Evening's Performance and Red Hot Patriot

by Mark Cofta

Hedgerow Theatre's got a good thing going with playwright-director Nagle Jackson, whose sixth play there, At This Evening's Performance, was also his first professionally produced work. Though I've questioned whether he's the best director for his own plays — especially new works — he stages this '83 comedy assuredly.

Artistic director Penelope Reed plays Hippolyta Posnik, co-leading an acting troupe touring Strevia, a small Eastern European country. Hippolyta's husband, Gunther (Ed Swidey, suitably pompous), hires a surly stage manager (David Franz) who soon admits he's from the "Popularity Force," a group of not-so-secret police. They suspect an actor of smuggling "intellectuals, scientists and Jews" out of Strevia, using lines as cues to dissidents. During tonight's performance, a Popularity Force officer will shoot the actor who utters the signal — and Gunther discovers that, though he's not the resistance agent, the line is his.

In the midst of dark farce — including affairs which their young ingenues, Saskia (Saundra Montijo) and Piers (Steven Carpenter), pursue with Gunther and Hippolyta, respectively — Jackson ponders a serious question: Should an artist compromise creative integrity for self-preservation? The answer proves hilarious in this brisk play's third act, when the company performs its truly excruciating pseudo-classic play, full of painful pratfalls and couplets.

Reed and Swidey make a suitably grand theatrical couple, ably supported by veteran character actor Bev Appleton as veteran character actor Oskar, but Susan Wefel nearly steals the show as Ludmilla Pankova, Strevia's imperious Minister of Culture, who harbors her own artistic aspirations.

One could quibble with some typical Hedgerow shortcomings — the younger learning-on-the-job actors aren't up to the task, for example — but the result is breezily enjoyable, a welcome addition to the growing Jackson-Hedgerow partnership. Through May 16, $22-$25, Hedgerow Theatre, 64 Rose Valley Road, Media, 610-565-4211, hedgerowtheatre.org.

The Taming of the Shrewd

If you put the words "kick-ass" in a play's title, it better kick ass.

Though the subject of Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, a Philadelphia Theatre Co. world première, clearly booted butt in her celebrated newspaper career, this star-driven play by journalists Margaret Engel and Allison Engel restrains Kathleen Turner as Ivins to a few tepid swipes.

The twin journalists follow the solo-biographical formula: Turner as Ivins ostensibly writes about her father, breaking to chat with us. A tiresome device — an Associated Press teletype machine churns out articles inspiring new topics — only highlights the artificiality.

In trying to make Ivins warm and cuddly, they dampen the wit that might otherwise kick ass. She says that "jokes make people listen and keep the outrage alive," but we don't hear much humor or outrage. The writers frame the play with Ivins' daddy issues, while director David Esbjornson and sound designers Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen underscore with sentimental guitar to tell us when to feel sad.

The play occasionally takes off when Turner shares some fun Ivins stories, both about her formative years (at a debutante ball, the 6-foot redhead "looked like a Saint Bernard among greyhounds") and her writing, and regales us with her "sweat and scramble" days with The Texas Observer.

But the writers soft-pedal her views on George W. Bush, about whose career Ivins wrote two best sellers. Maybe they're taking the high road, but they might also anticipate some backlash against this outspoken liberal. (Opening night, the audience of corporate sponsors and private donors noticeably cooled when Ivins proudly uttered the L-word and lectured in support of the First Amendment and the need to "raise hell." The well-heeled glowered, and a Main Line matron near me hissed, "Bullshit!")

This might be the first play that's inspired me to read a book not because of what's in the script, but what's not.

Through April 25, $46-$69, Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St., 215-985-0420, philadelphiatheatrecompany.org.