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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Charming to a fault

August 1, 2008 by Terry Teachout

In this week’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report from San Diego on the Old Globe‘s productions of The Pleasure of His Company and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
pleasure280.jpgTheatrical manners have changed greatly in the half century since “The Pleasure of His Company” opened on Broadway. Nowadays it’s an insult to call a play “well-made,” but back then you could still get away with setting a neatly crafted boulevard comedy in the drawing room of a home whose owners employed a butler. Not only did “The Pleasure of His Company” run for 474 performances, but it was later turned into a Hollywood movie that did just as well at the box office. Today, though, well-made comedies are as dead as drawing rooms, and the Old Globe’s revival of “The Pleasure of His Company” is the first time that the play has been on stage anywhere since the original production closed in 1959.
To what do we attribute this act of dramatic archaeology? The credit goes to Darko Tresnjak, the Old Globe’s resident artistic director, who has a taste for American stage comedies of the ’50s that you wouldn’t expect from a director born in Yugoslavia. “I find that underneath the glossy surfaces, the subtext [of these plays] is actually quite subversive,” he told James Hebert of the San Diego Union-Tribune earlier this month. Last year Mr. Tresnjak revived John van Druten’s “Bell, Book and Candle,” a quintessential example of the genre. Alas, I didn’t see that production, but if was half as stylish as this one, it must have been terrific….
Biddeford “Pogo” Poole (Patrick Page), the star of “The Pleasure of His Company,” is an ascot-wearing socialite-sportsman who walked out on Katharine (Ellen Karas), his ex-wife, and Jessica (Erin Chambers), his only daughter, to become (in Katharine’s exasperated phrase) a “globetrotting heel.” Years later he shows up on Katharine’s doorstep just in time for Jessica’s wedding, determined to charm his way into Jessica’s heart–and, if possible, Katharine’s bed. That Katharine has married again, this time to a rich, dull San Francisco businessman (Jim Abele), means nothing to Pogo, who uses his charm as an offensive weapon and is in the habit of having his own way, no matter what it costs or whom it hurts.
The part of Pogo was created on Broadway by Cyril Ritchard and played on screen by Fred Astaire, which will give you a pretty good idea of what it takes to make “The Pleasure of His Company” fly. (This is the sort of play in which lines like “I dug out some of the ancestral bourbon” and “Morality is merely low blood pressure” are tossed off between drinks.) The good news is that Mr. Tresnjak and the Old Globe have got every bit of what it takes. Not only does Mr. Page waltz through his part with the utmost suppleness and urbanity, but his supporting cast keeps him all the way up on his toes…
Across the courtyard in its attractive outdoor pavilion, the Old Globe is performing “The Merry Wives of Windsor” as part of a three-play Shakespeare festival that also includes “All’s Well That Ends Well” and “Romeo and Juliet.” Paul Mullins has staged “Merry Wives” in the manner of a Hollywood Western, turning Falstaff (Eric Hoffmann) into a Yosemite Sam-type blowhard equipped with a pair of six-shooters and a 20-gallon hat. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a Shakespeare comedy transplanted to the Wild West–the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival did “As You Like It” in much the same way last season–and some of the actors, Mr. Hoffmann in particular, skate casually atop Mr. Mullins’ directorial conceit instead of breaking through the ice and plunging into deeper comic waters. Still, there’s plenty of uncomplicated pleasure to be found in this thoroughly agreeable production…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

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About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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