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Peer Reviews Cactus Flower By Abe Burrows Entire contents copyright © 2008, Craig Nolan Highley. All rights reserved.
The Shelby County Community Theatre has another hit on its hands, with its current production of Cactus Flower. Masterfully directed and well acted, the show overcomes a dated script and a couple of minor production problems and delivers a crowd-pleasing evening of theatre. Legendary humorist/author/playwright Abe Burroughs' play (based on the French stage farce Fleur de Cactus by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy) originally opened on Broadway on December 8, 1965. It ran nearly three years with a revolving cast that included such luminaries as Lauren Bacall, Barry Nelson, Brenda Vaccaro and Lloyd Bridges. It's probably best remembered for the 1969 film version that starred Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman and Goldie Hawn.
The sensibilities of the swinging 60's are very much still evident in SCCT's current revival. The story follows the relationship between young, wild Toni Simmons (Rachael Yeager) and her older, married lover Julian Winston (Cook Farmer), a playboy dentist. Convinced the two have no future together, Toni makes a halfhearted and easily thwarted suicide attempt. Guilt-ridden, Julian rashly promises to leave his wife so the couple can be together. However, Julian has never revealed to Toni that his "marriage" is actually an elaborate lie concocted to keep Toni at arm's legth. Toni refuses to break up his household without first meeting and talking with Julian's soon-to-be-ex, so Julian enlists the aid of his shy, spinsterish assistant Stephanie Dickinson (Candy Thomas) to pose as his non-existent wife. Complications arise when Toni decides the two must find her a new beau so everyone concerned can live happily ever after. In typical French farce fashion, nothing goes right and each lie is compounded by another until the web of deceit is dizzying and side-splittingly funny. The only things missing are slamming doors! Director Ashley Raymer-Brown makes an impressive debut with this, her first attempt at directing a full-fledged stage production. She keeps the performance moving at a brisk pace with no lulls in the action, and has coaxed strong showings by nearly every member of her surprisingly large cast. Farmer is just hilarious in the lead role of Winston. He plays the cad with relish, and his descent from cocky self-assuredness into desperation is pulled off with believability and style. His drunken rant in the final scene is especially hilarious. Thomas is also fantastic as Stephanie, whose character arc is almost the complete opposite to Farmer's. She plays the weary put-upon secretary with just enough pathos that you can't help cheering her on as her character slowly develops a backbone over the course of the play. The character of Toni can be a little hard to take at times with her constant doe-eyed naiveté, but she is well-served by Yeager in a performance that avoids playing the comedy too broadly and makes her all the more human. Another subtle performance is provided by Nils Hamilton as Igor, the beatnik playwright who manages to romance both leading ladies through the course of the story. Not so subtle performances are given by Brian Douglas Barker and John Hertel, as a Spaniard and schlub, respectively, that are tangled in the web of deceit that drives the plot. Both characters are larger than life, and Barker and Hertel play them broadly and over-the-top. That's not a bad thing, and the results are extremely funny. These are the characters you will probably remember most vividly when the play is over. On the technical side, Barker doubles as the set designer, and his folding, pop-up-book style set is probably the most elaborate ever attempted at SCCT. Representing four separate locations over the play's 15 different scenes, it's just amazing to behold. Add to that how well the stage managers Sue Schneider and Maria Newell manage to orchestrate every single scene change with barely a lull in the action and you have quite a visual theatrical experience. I have only two mild complaints about the whole production. The first applies to Clint Gill's lighting design. At times the lighting seemed a bit harsh and created a lot of shadows, and the lighting during the scene changes seemed a little too bright. There was also a moment when a spotlight didn't find its target, though that may have been the fault of an actor failing to find his mark. The second would be a minor quibble with the program; it was nicely designed, but the print was so tiny I had trouble finding the names I was looking for. I'm assuming this was a cost-saving attempt to reduce the number of pages, but for those of us with failing eyesight it just made it difficult to read. Overall this was a fine production that all involved
should be proud of, and an impressive debut from
a director I'm sure we will be seeing more of in
the future!
Cactus Flower Shelby County Community Theatre Starring Brian Douglas Barker, Sarah Barker, Erin Engstrom Block, Callie Bowker, Cook Farmer, Anne Johnson, Nils Hamilton, Mimzy Harvey, John Hertel, Karen Marton, James Ray Morgan, Jon Peed, Richard Ray, Amanda Simmons, Candy Thomas and Rachael Yeager. Posted May 11, 2008
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