Review - Come Back To The 39 Steps, Little Sheba, Little Sheba

During a quiet moment midway through Act I of last Saturday night's performance of Come Back, Little Sheba, an annoyed (and annoying) man seated in the orchestra section was loudly heard complaining, "I'm waiting for something to happen."

The poor, disgruntled customer apparently didn't realize that oftentimes with William Inge, everything is happening when it seems like there's nothing going on. Director Michael Pressman's terrific production of the playwright's 1950 Broadway debut, thick with the tension of disillusionment and sexual repression, is full of beauty, tender sadness and real emotional pull.

There is tremendous chemistry between S. Epatha Merkerson and Kevin Anderson as former high school sweethearts Lola and Doc, a Midwestern couple whose relationship lost all its chemistry twenty years ago when Doc, the kind of guy who wouldn't dream of marrying a girl who would sleep with him before exchanging wedding vows, married Lola after getting her pregnant. Their baby was stillborn, Lola was left incapable of conceiving again and Doc, who became a chiropractor after not being able to hack med school, turned to drinking.

When the curtain rises, Doc has been sober for a year but the new temptation in his life is the pretty art student, Marie (Zoe Kazan), who rents a room from the couple. He believes her to be a "good girl," unlike the easy one he had to marry, but doesn't know she has her own ideas about which boys you marry and which you have fun with.

Lola, once the prettiest girl around, has become a puppy dog continually seeking approval from her disinterested husband. Only knowing flirtation as a way of dealing with men, she seeks breaks from her loneliness by fussing over the genial mailman (Lyle Kanouse), the hunky milkman (Matthew J. Williamson) and Marie's latest fling, track and field star Turk (Brian J. Smith), who models for her figure study class. While alone, Lola regularly looks out to the street and calls for her pet dog, Sheba, who was lost long ago.

Merkerson is sadly adorable as the delusionally hopeful Lola. Her sexual fascination with the muscular milkman and the shirtless track star has an impish innocence, but in more somber moments she subtly communicates Lola's knowledge that her life will never be what it was going to be before she lost her child.

Anderson's Doc is a perfect match for her, himself slowly cracking under the pressure to do the right things at the expense of his own happiness. The affection he tries to give Lola is passionless, like a father's love for his young daughter. He quietly, yet firmly, communicates the fear he has for his desire for a quick cure, be it a comforting shot or a shot at Marie.

Zoe Kazan's Marie seems almost a perky cartoon when she first appears, but it eventually becomes apparent that's one of her man-trapping allures. Brian J. Smith, whose shirtless production photo has been the talk of the chat boards during previews, finds some interesting depth to Turk, what can be disregarded as a stereotypical jock role.

Jennifer von Mayrhauser's costumes, particularly those for Marie, stress the fashionable modesty of the times and James Noone's bi-level set makes the rooms of Doc and Lola's home resemble little prison cells stacked on each other.

A solid production of a very moving play.

I'm not going to tell you I laughed a whole lot during The 39 Steps but they did have me smiling heartily throughout most of the evening and that should count for something. This is one of those intentionally under-cast, under-budgeted comedies where the fun is seeing how quickly the actors can switch from one character to another, how cleverly the designers can whip up costumes and set pieces out of spare parts and how many quick spoofs and comic references can be crammed into a script. It's the kind of formulaic chaos that has to be done with crackerjack professionalism in order to look so insanely slapped together.

The straight man for the evening is Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 spy thriller of the same name, based on the novel by John Buchan and adapted here by Patrick Barlow. Director Maria Aitken's cast of four plays 150 roles with the utmost conviction and seriousness.

It all begins when the ridiculously handsome Richard Hannay (Charles Edwards, all square jawed, arch eyebrowed and impeccably dictioned), bored with life in London decides to shake things up by doing, "something mindless and trivial. Something utterly pointless." His conclusion is obvious: "I'll go to the theater!"

But when shots are fired as he's relaxing in his box at the music hall, Hannay suddenly finds his arms filled with secret agent Annabella Schmidt (Jennifer Ferrin, barely recognizable in her three roles), who is on the run from men who know she has knowledge of military secrets, which sets off a complicated plot involving murder, spies, bi-planes, the Loch Ness Monster, romance, adventure, a man with the world's greatest memory, and, of course, what the devil The 39 Steps is supposed to mean. It's the old "innocent man on the run" routine with numerous visual and verbal quotes from the Hitchcock catalog and even an appearance by the director himself.

Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders complete the foursome and take on the bulk of the multi-casting, with set and costume designer Peter McKintosh, providing them with clever and humorous means for the two of them to not only play several roles at the same time, but to have them effectively take turns playing the same character in one scene.

But while an admirable effort and very well played, The 39 Steps never builds to any real comic climax and, though never dull, generally remains on the same lightly amusing level. As foreshadowed in its opening scene, "something mindless and trivial. Something utterly pointless."

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Kevin Anderson and S. Epatha Merkerson in Come Back, Little Sheba; Bottom: Jennifer Ferrin and Charles Edwards in The 39 Steps

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