Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps is a well-oiled machine of a play, filled with lots of crazy sight gags, knowing winks, and enough degrees of self-referentiality to make your head spin. It was a hit in London, and for a time, a hot ticket on Broadway.
It’s hard to explain why the Milwaukee Rep’s new production only hits a few of the play’s marks. It has a terrific comic cast. Reese Madigan has the leading-man looks, the agility for a physically demanding part, and a wry grin to sell the script’s satire. Gerry Neugent and John Pribyl are versatile comedians, adept at creating the play’s dozens of supporting characters, and able to switch between them with a quick change of hats. Helen Anker has the ingredients needed to play the show’s trio of leading ladies, including a great command of accents – imagine playing Young Frankenstein’s Frau Blucher, Kim Novak and a female version of The Simpsons’ Groundskeeper Willie in the same play.
The 39 Steps lives on its sight gags – stage inventions that suggest the sprawling locales and action-scenes of the original Alfred Hitchcock movie. A strobe light and a few steamer trunks create a speeding train. Two actors become a parade of bagpiping Scotsman. Four actors mysteriously multiply in a final shootout in the London Palladium.
But director J.R. Sullivan sets a tone that is more improvisational than precise. There’s a lot of heart in that approach, but this is one of those 21st-century spectacles that’s long on irony and short on emotion. Where chilly efficiency is called for, we get the goofiness of a Benny Hill sketch in which the performers are always on the verge of cracking up.
I saw the play on Sunday night – the end of a grueling week of rehearsals, previews and performances. So it’s understandable that things were a little loosey-goosey. The show will almost certainly find more of a groove as the weeks go on. Right now, these are the hardest working actors on a Milwaukee stage. As things relax a bit, audiences will give them laughter rather than just appreciation.
*****
Crumbs from the Table of Joy is one of Lynn Nottage’s earliest plays, and it shows. It wears its ambitions like the big “Vs” that adorn the shifts of the Crump family daughters (they mean the girls are following the tenets of their father’s spiritual leader and remaining virgins). And for the most part it wears them well, blending the sociological and the personal in a style that creates a vividly rendered world.
A coming of age story that owes much to The Glass Menagerie, Nottage tells the story of a southern black family who moves from Florida to Brooklyn after the death of the mother. Godfrey, the father, is struggling with grief and the challenges of raising two high-school age daughters on his own. And the daughters – particularly Ernestine, the oldest – are trying to find themselves in a new world, and break free from the strict traditions of the father and their Southern roots. Since the year is 1960, it’s quite a new world to deal with. As director Dennis F. Johnson says in his notes, the Crump daughters and their world are all coming of age here.
Enter Lily Ann, the mother’s sister, is a creature of the big city who embodies the social movements it represents. She’s a free thinker, a Communist, a cultural denizen of Harlem, its jazz and its politics of revolution. And she ain’t wearin’ no “V” on her dress.
Director Dennis F. Johnson has assembled a terrific cast, and much of this production’s success depends on the personalities that explode on the stage, giving a human dimension to the broader social conflicts. Some of his staging is a bit static, but the world of this Brooklyn basement apartment brims with the characters’ soul. Morocco Omari achieves the challenging task of making Godfrey full-blooded and sympathetic, his autocratic inflexibility is rooted in the terror of this new life. Tiffany Yvonne Cox and Ashleigh LaThrop capture the impulsive energy of rebellious teens. And Cassandra Bissell finds the human touch in what is essentially a symbolic character.
Marti Gobel, co-founder of Uprooted Theatre, which co-produced the show with Renaissance Theaterworks, plays Lily Ann with the appropriate sass and vinegar. But you also sense the soul-ache that lies deep beneath her snappy clothes and attitude.
The Crump daughters and America aren’t the only ones coming of age here. As another example of the work Uprooted can do, Crumbs is a sign that change is coming to Milwaukee theater with the flowering of a company that will offer an important new voice.
