Arthur Putnam has just finished his latest novel and it’s a complete departure from his usual detective story style. It’s a romance and it’s so hot his wife suspects he may not have invented it! Is it fact or fiction? A confession or An Act of the Imagination? Just when you think you know, think again!
Saturday evening saw my return to Batavia to see The Albright Theatre’s final show of the season. With lots of twists and turns in the story, An Act of the Imagination certainly keeps you on your toes. I enjoyed the show, but I’m not sure I liked it. Bernard Slade is best known for Same Time, Next Year and his writing credits on several popular sitcoms. However, I don’t think this script ranks amongst the top of his writings. I just kept getting the feeling that Mr. Slade was trying too hard to be tricky and clever.
In regards to the Albright’s production, there were several things that were really good. First off, I loved the set design (JP Quirk). Warm, rich colors, elegantly furnished, great French windows in the back, I knew before opening the program that we were going to be sitting in an English drawing room all evening.
Costumes (Julie Moss, Veronica Krystal), particularly for the women, were very well done. Julia’s (Jana Sanders) dresses were spot-on perfect for the time. I loved the black dress and jacket towards the end. Totally Jackie Kennedy. And Brenda’s (Veronica Krystal) dress was just plain fun.
As for my favorite performances, I really need to talk about two of the women. Jana Sanders is a strong actress with pretty good timing. There was a little warming up necessary, but once she was into it, she was great. While the two men (Ron Gustin as Arthur and Thom Will as Simon) acting opposite her also gave good performances, Sanders was the one who continuously drew your attention. She had a pretty good handle on the British way of delivering the dry punchlines. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish, they have such a way of saying little asides that one may not even realize it was a joke until sometime later. Sanders got this and was able to carry it off fairly well.
The actress I just loved was barely on stage! Erica Paszkowski enters near the end as Brooke Carmichael and gives a performance so effortlessly and natural that…well, I can’t really finish my thought without a spoiler warning. Suffice it to say, even with the limited stage time, she was my favorite of the evening.
As always, there were a few things I may have done differently. First of all, I can’t say it enough: If you are going to do a show based in London (or any other major world city for that matter) you need to do your research and make sure you are pronouncing the landmark names correctly. It’s not like Welsh, which is spoken briefly during the play. There are approximately 3 million people in the world who speak Welsh fluently. The likelihood that one of them is sitting in an audience in the far-western suburbs of Chicago is pretty low. 15 million people from around the world visit London every year. There is a significantly higher chance that one (or more) of them is sitting in your audience. So please, I beg you, learn to Leicester Square correctly. It sounds like Lester. And the famous place where Eliza Doolittle was selling flowers is CUH-vent Garden with a short “u” sound, not COH-vent Garden with a long “o”. For more on this same topic, refer back to this earlier review.
I would also offer a word of caution regarding the accents. For the most part I was well-impressed with the British accents. However, I’m not sure if fatigue set in or maybe the last couple of scenes hadn’t been rehearsed as much, but near the end of the show the accents began to fade and get muddled. Just beware that it’s happening and it will fix itself.
Direction (Sherry Poulos) for this production wasn’t quite as strong as I’ve seen at the Albright. Pacing was a bit slow, blackouts weren’t terrible but weren’t done as quickly as I’d like to see, and at times I felt the actors were a little lost on stage. Too often they were just walking back and forth without a real purpose to their movement. And when they did need to move to a new spot it tended to feel contrived. I think the direction has a solid start, but hasn’t quite reached that fluid, easy execution yet.
I guess I’ve got to say I’m a bit “eh” on this one. Again, this is a great theatre group with wonderful people and loads of hard work has gone into this. If you are in the area, then I encourage you to get over to the Albright to see it. They, too, deserve to be supported and certainly could have used a larger audience. However, it may not be the show I would recommend a special trip out to Batavia to see. The script itself is just okay and although there were some wonderful portrayals, I’m not sure they are enough to overcome the script.
An Act of the Imagination is presented by the Albright Theatre in downtown Batavia and runs through May 21. For more information and to buy tickets visit their website here.
