|
||
|
|
Peer Reviews Bell, Book
and Candle Entire contents are copyright © 2007, Craig Nolan Highley. All rights reserved.
John Van Druten's quaint 1950 play Bell, Book and Candle, which premiered on Broadway with a cast including the great Rex Harrison, has had many incarnations, both good (the 1958 film starring James Stewart, Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon) and bad (the disastrous 1976 TV movie with Yvette Mimieux and Doris Roberts). Little Colonel Playhouse's current production doesn't reach either of those extremes, but it is a handsome production with a great cast. The predictable story involves Shep Henderson, a publisher about to get married. Unknown to him, his fiancée's college rival Gillian Holroyd is his landlady. Gillian is also a witch, and places a spell on Shep to make him fall in love with her. She does this strictly to get revenge on his fiancée, but predictably it backfires and she finds herself falling for him. More interesting are the antics of the play's secondary characters, Gillian's eccentric Aunt Queenie and cad of a brother Nicky (another witch and a warlock, respectively), and Sidney Redlitch, an alcoholic author writing a book about witchcraft. The antics of these three, first helping Gillian's cause and later working against it, provide the show's best moments. Tom Menendez is believable in his increasingly ruffled portrayal of Shep, but Magdalen Hartman easily outperforms him as Gillian. She gives the role an interestingly cold and calculated persona in the beginning, allowing the character's reserve to break over the course of the play. It's a very understated performance that really works. But really it is the three secondary characters who steal the show. As Aunt Queenie, Grace Poganski is hilarious and dominates every scene she's in, very reminiscent of several of the wacky relatives on Bewitched (a TV show that was strongly influenced by this play). As Nicky, Andy Higgins pulls off the charming rogue seemingly with ease, smiling and winking his way through his entire performance. And LCP stalwart Wayne C. Muscar blusters his way through another endearing character turn in the role of Redlitch. The set, lighting effects and costumes are also outstanding, some of the best I've seen at Little Colonel's. The opening night performance I witnessed did
have some problems with pacing and volume, which
may have just been the result of opening night
jitters but were distracting enough to deserve
a mention. Overall, though, this is an entertaining
production from one of the area's longest-running
theater companies.
Bell, Book and Candle Little Colonel Playhouse Starring Magdalen Hartman, Andy Higgins, Tom Menendez, Wayne C. Muscar and Grace Poganski.
Posted Nov. 30, 2007
|
|