Review: PERFECT ARRANGEMENT Is Perfectly Enjoyable at Elmwood Playhouse

Before the lights come up on Perfect Arrangement, a stylized old-timey TV screen above the rear flat of the set displays clips from seminal TV sitcom The Honeymooners.

The clever makeshift prop – televisions in their infancy resembled half a fishbowl encased in a slab of furniture -- is not called for in the script but rather is a fitting flourish added by director Paul Russo, who has smartly cast and piloted this production to deliver its weighty message of dignity and self-preservation without sacrificing its abundant entertainment value.

With that airborne TV screen, Mr. Russo is playing off the central conceit conjured by Perfect Arrangement author Topher Payne: the four principal characters lead double lives that include “falsehood” selves who behave like innocuous sitcom characters when the occasion calls for a façade to disguise their collective conspiracy, as it were, of being gay.

It is the dawn of the 1950s. Bob Martindale (Steve Bermack) and Jim Baxter (Dylan Coonrad) are lovers. So are Millie Martindale (Elinor Greenway) and Norma Baxter (Rena Gavigan). The titular “perfect arrangement” is that this quartet presents as two married couples because “coming out” three-quarters of a century ago was not much of an option. At least not if one wanted to lead mainstream existences -- not to mention remain gainfully employed.

Complicating matters for Bob and Norma is that they swim in a fishbowl, working for the federal government in Washington, D.C., at a time when McCarthyism is about to get revved up to thoroughly ruin (and end, via suicide) innocent lives. 

Played with a self-assured, engaging competency by Mr. Bermack, Bob is a business-like U.S. Department of State middle-manager charged with rooting out the agency’s perceived traitors – namely communists. Norma is Bob’s secretary, with Ms. Gavigan turning in a strong portrayal of a take-charge, classy over-achiever who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

At the outset of the play, both Bob and we find out that to his portfolio of undesirables has now been added a new class of “deviants” believed to threaten national security – homosexuals.

While Norma immediately feels understandably conflicted by her boss’s expanded purview, World War II veteran Bob proceeds with cold efficiency to discharge his duties without apparent moral misgivings.

Both the writer and Mr. Russo offset this seemingly dark and heavy-handed state of affairs at the state department with effective, tongue-in-cheek deftness. The seriousness of the subject matter is no less impactful when filtered through light moments laced with wit that is delivered expertly by Dylan Coonrad as Jim, a teacher, and by Elinor Greenway as Millie, a prototypical 1950s sitcom housewife. There’s more than a little “Lucy” in her portrayal, yet her serious moments carry the requisite credibility.

Both actors are adept at using physical comedy to optimal effect. Mr. Coonrad flounces about and turns facial expressions into wordless punchlines. Ms. Greenway whirls to and from like a kooky dervish, propelling herself from one side of the stage to the other, as if a bundle of nerves being carried aloft by a hurricane-force wind. They both are casually inventive in their characterizations and fun to watch.

Into this mix is thrown a wild card, in the person of one Barbara Grant. She’s another State Department employee with her own agenda, and one tough, designer clothes horse of a “broad” (in the parlance of the day), who is brought vibrantly to life by skillful actor Michelle Concha. Her caliber of performance invariably raises the heat and energy in the room.

The play kicks off with a voiceover announcer emulating the opening credits of The Honeymooners, another welcome directorial choice. The actors emerge in unison through doors on set to reinforce the sitcom illusion. There’s even a stage manager (Evelyn Russo) with headset and clapboard to signify the start of each scene with a “quiet please!”

Bob’s and Norma’s boss Theodore Sunderson (a nicely authentic and focused Paul Flipse) and his delightfully ditzy wife Kitty (comedically proficient Elizabeth Mayer) are visiting Bob and Millie’s Georgetown apartment, with Jim and Norma ostensibly visiting from the unit next door.

In fact, Norma and Millie live together in the space where the play is set. In a metaphorical gag, there is a secret passage connecting the two apartments, where Bob and Jim disappear into a closet to go to their place, and return to the ladies’ space by literally coming out of the closet.

The banter of the opening scene is rife with the innocuous platitudes and allusions to commercial hucksterism that defined the carefully coifed and superficially plastic world of sitcoms.

The endgame for the four is to not have Mr. Sunderson suspect they are anything other than typical, happily married, all-American couples.

Eventually, the phoniness of the constant “show” they must stage for people like Mr. Sunderson and the sacrifice that attends a compromised quality of life – Norma pines to have a child – leads to moments of truth for each of them in what is a very satisfying denouement.

One of the highlights of this production is the vintage clothing assembled by Costume Designer par excellence Janet Fenton, who told me there are pieces on stage that are not recreations but originals from the 1950s. The women’s wardrobe is a show in itself.

As is expected of a Elmwood show, the set design, by Donna Buckalter, is faithful to the time and place of the setting, a tableau of mid-century modern furnshings that evoke, well, a 1950s sitcom.

Kudos as always, to Prop Master magician Rich Ciero (love that TV).

Technical Direction is by Rob Ward, Lighting Design by Deanna Koski. Evelyn Russo is Assistant to the Director. Stage Manager is Nancy Logan. Sarah Kohout is Assistant Stage Manager.

Producers are Debi Fleckenstein and Ellen Blakely.