PREMIERE! Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith
PREMIERE!
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
If you thought that the Ross Valley Players only performed standard reheats and tried and tested American classics check out their marquee: RVP is presently staging the west coast premiere of PREMIERE! (and that is not a typing error).
PREMIERE! is the last work of Dale Wasserman: the author of the staged version of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and MAN OF LA MANCHA.
Prior to arriving in Marin, the show had been produced once, this year, in Peoria, Arizona.
Dale Wasserman's niece, Abby Wasserman lives in Mill Valley and offered the script with both generosity and utmost confidence to RVP director Robert Wilson.
Imagine if you will a RVP production that involves cell phones deliberately going off on stage, speaks of the internet and has characters writing on computers.
Everything about this play speaks of greatness: Wasserman wrote only eleven published plays; amazingly, they garnered a total of nine Tony Awards.
RVP throws all the wood on the fire for this production: leads are played by two of Marin's most enjoyed actors: Ron Severdia and Wood Lockhart; the set is designed by the award winning Ron Krempetz; plus the conspicuous talents of Molly McGrath, Buzz Halsing, Judy Holmes and Edward McCloud grace the stage.
Ron Severdia is the axle about which the play orbits: he plays Gil Fryman: a character patterned, rightfully so, after Neil Simon: a playwright who is financially successful, hugely popular and immensely tormented by his reputation for fluffy comedies and Broadway blockbusters.
While Mephistopheles does not personally offer Gil Fryman, the dissatisfied playwright, a wager, seemingly, one his surrogates does: Gil's wife: Rebecca Fryman—played by the lovely and extremely capable Molly McGrath.
With connubial predictability Rebecca drops the gauntlet at her husband's literary feet, goads him and then like Xantippe frets and regrets his acceptance of her challenge for the rest of the play.
The wager: to write ALCHIBIADES: the missing, apocryphal or alluded to play of Shakespeare, which may or may not have been written.
Responding to the dare of his wife, in iambic pentameter, Gil grinds out an amazing Shakespearean parody and slaps it into a 17th century palimpsest provided by the shady con man Lefty Guggenheim, played by Buzz Halsing.
The final product of Lefty and Gil is so convincing that the haughty, high brow Shakespeare scholar: Professor Hawkins, played by Judy Holmes, takes the bait and runs around the world with it.
PREMIERE is a sophisticated, thoughtful, erudite comedy not to be missed and sure to be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates a good hoax and fine theatre.
For tickets contact the box office via www.rossvalleyplayers.com or call the landline at 415-456-9555.