ENCHANTED APRIL , By Matthew Barber, From the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, Directed by Michael Butler. Center REPertory Company 1601 Civic Drive in downtown Walnut Creek.www.centerrep.org925.943.7469 April 2- May 2, 2009
ENCHANTED APRIL IS A PLAY TO ENJOY
In this age of plays filled with deep psychological meaning, violence and no formal construction it was a pleasure to visit Walnut Creek’s Center Rep to enjoy a charming well-constructed play with a beginning, middle, end with likeable characters. Michael Butler has corralled a top-notch cast who perform as an ensemble carrying off his deft directorial touches with hilarious results.
The played, based on the 1922 novel and was made into a successful movie in 1992 and adapted into a stage play earning a Tony nomination during its Broadway run in 2003. This post World War I romantic comedy of four diverse English women transported from the depressing rain-drenched England to a rented Italian castle surrounded by spring flowers and a trellis draped with Wisteria is in the mold of Barbara Cartland, one of the most successful writers of romance novels of all time. The play really is more attuned to a woman’s psyche but that did not prevent many of the men in the audience laughing and nodding agreement with the humorous lines. Some of those humorous lines, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell in the “The Importance of Being Ernest” are delivered with haughty perfect timing by the multi-talented local favorite Wanda McCadden as the indomitable widow, appropriately named Mrs. Graves. For example: “Dotage is preferable to condescension” and “Inheritance is so much better than acquisition!”
The story is introduced through the words ofLotty Wilton (Lizzie Calogero) breaking the fourth wall with a prolog and epilog. Calogero, a mainstay at CenterRep, puts her indubitable stamp on the role with enough energy to play all the parts. In all starts in dreary, rainy England emphasized by the first act taking place on a first act set with a four tier bank of umbrellas as thunder and rain cascades back stage. It is the perfect setup to contrast with the bright, sun draped, flower strewn Italian court yard complete with a two level stone castle ofact two which brings spontaneous audience applause. Similarly, three drab and one exotic women are transformed as the enchantment of the bucolic environment seeps into their personae.
Lotty Wilton, an unhappy middle-aged homemaker, with a stodgy husband Melleresh (Alex Moggridge), finds rental advertisement for an Italian castle available in the month of April. To share the cost of renting she enlists the partnership of Rose Arnott (Suzeanne Irving) a mousey housewife married to a successful globe-trotting author Frederick (Steve Irish) whose attentions to her are distant. Lotty’s advertisement to obtain two more women to share the castle attracts the fore-mentioned Mrs. Graves and Lady Caroline Bramble (beautiful Maryssa Wanlass) a lost soul disappointed in love and floundering in the English social scene.
When the women arrive, an Italian maid/cook Constanza (Kerri Shawn), whose dialog is in Italian, meets them and her hysterical performance steps up the humor a few notches. Melleresh arrives on the invitation of Lotty. Frederick arrives to consummate a tryst with Lady Bramble. They too are transformed into attentive loving husbands. Moggridge’s brief stint in a towel that only partially covers his nakedness brings the house down. Antony Wilding (Joseph Rende) the owner of the castle plays a pivotal role in completing the enchantment for all involved. Except for the marginal performance of Rende, there is not a weak link in the cast although they all are not given equal opportunity to display their skills but the exuberant yet nuanced emoting of the cast is infectious and it invades the audience before the evening ends.
