Being Theatrical

Last Saturday was “Mer’s day,” so she was in charge. Her plans did not need to start until late morning, so she let me go running thirteen miles on the Towpath. I’m kicking around the idea of running the Cleveland Marathon as part of a fundraiser for a colleague’s husband who was an avid runner, but is currently fighting cancer. I think I can be ready in time (the Cleveland Marathon is in late May), but I wanted to see how I felt with longer runs at this point. The run went fine, so I’m still seriously considering the marathon.

After I got home and showered and ate, we puttered around the house until almost noon, when we got the car and headed west. We went to Pennsylvania, to Geneva College (about ninety minutes away). One of Mer’s former students, Tiffany, is involved in the theater there, and we have gone to see her in a couple of plays to date – Measure for Measure and Alice in Wonderland (where she was the lead). On Saturday, Tiffany was the lead woman in She Stoops to Conquer, a farce about mistaken identities.

Mer and I had seen She Stoops to Conquer years ago at Actors’ Summit Theater, but we could not remember much of the plot of the play. We both remembered that we enjoyed it and thought it witty, so that was a good sign. Geneva’s production was very good, and the play was amusing throughout, with several laugh-out-loud moments.

The basic plot (ignoring some of the subplots – the play gets quite involved) is one based on mistaken identities and a misunderstanding of social standing – a “manners” play. An old and conservative man has a young daughter (played by Tiffany). He has arranged for a handsome and wealthy and successful son of an old friend to come and stay with them to see if a marriage will result. The daughter is intrigued by the description of the son, but the son has a major flaw – he is uptight and shy around women of good breeding, although is it rumored that he is fond of flirting with women of the working class. The son, meanwhile, has been misinformed that the house in which he is to stay is actually an inn, and so when he shows up, he starts ordering the father around and behaving as though he owns the place, which infuriates the father. When he meets the young woman he might marry, he freezes up and can barely function, so the young woman conceives of the plan to pretend to be a barmaid, so the young man might relax around her and she can get to know him (thus, she “stoops to conquer”).

The production went well. It was a matinee performance, which was sparsely attended, and mostly by grandparents. That made for a bit of a low-energy audience, but the players still kept up good energy on stage. The main actors were excellent and natural-seeming. A few of the supporting roles were a bit stilted or forced, but not to the point of distraction. The biggest difficulty in the play is always the case with high school and college productions: it was a bit hard for the actors to pull off the old men and women of the play. It worked fine, but I think one of the reasons the the Actors’ Summit version worked somewhat better was that older men played the older men parts. Still, that is unavoidable in a college production if the director is going to cast students in all the parts.

The set was basic, but effective – mostly two staircases leading to a mostly-open second floor. The lower level set was confined to the back of the stage and was a sitting nook with a fireplace. The set did give the suggestion of an inn, and it worked well for the action of the play.

It was a good production, and Mer and I had a very entertaining afternoon. We also got to briefly chat with Tiffany after the play, and she was very grateful that we had come to see it.

We headed back home and had supper, and then Mer took me out again, and to another play. This time, we headed over to the much-closer Kent State, to see their production of Ragtime. This production was in the new-to-us large theater that was finished as part of an expansion of the arts-and-music building, and the new theater is huge and beautiful. We had seats near the front. Kent uses a mixture of graduate and undergraduate students in their productions, so their plays are usually very strong. Still, I was not prepared for the high level of Ragtime. It was pretty amazing.

Ragtime is based on a book about race (whites and blacks) and immigrant relations. It ties together several story lines, focusing on a black family, an Eastern European father and daughter, and an affluent white family, with the play mostly taking place in the greater New York city area. As the title suggests, ragtime music features prominently in the musical, and that was a lot of fun.

The actors/singers were jaw-droppingly good, especially the lead actor who played Coalhouse, a ragtime musician who is looking for a woman he loves. As far as I remember from the cast list, the actor who played Coalhouse was the only professional actor, and I am glad they cast him. Even at the start of the play, when there were close to fifty actors on stage at the same time, singing the opening numbers, my eye was drawn to Coalhouse. He had a huge stage presence, and he could sing mightily. What a great actor, at least for this role.

The other actors were all excellent, to the point where after the play, I asked Mer that if this was the level of talent a regional production could put on, how did anyone ever make it in New York or Los Angeles? Kent’s Ragtime was professional-grade all the way through: acting, music, set, and sound system.

The story itself was compelling as well. Sometimes in plays there are characters whom I do not like or about whom I simply do not care. Ragtime did not have any of these. I was interested in what happened to all of the main characters, and there are a lot of them – eight main characters in the three main families, and many supporting roles.

While I suspect many people would not want to see two plays spanning over two hundred years on the same day, it made for a pretty great day for me and Mer.

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