RSS 2.0 FeedJanuary 11, 2012, Theatre
Talented cast is nothing to sneeze at
EARTh’s (Equity Actors’ Readers’ Theatre) concert reading of Noël Coward’s "Hay Fever" shows you don’t always need a fully produced play to capture an audience—just gifted actors. Some of Kansas City’s best talent, directed by Doug Weaver, came together Monday evening at St. Teresa’s Academy to portray a convincingly self-involved family and its confused and jostled weekend guests.
EARTh’s (Equity Actors’ Readers’ Theatre) concert reading of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever shows you don’t always need a fully produced play to capture an audience—just gifted actors. Some of Kansas City’s best talent, directed by Doug Weaver, came together Monday evening at St. Teresa’s Academy to portray a convincingly self-involved family and its confused and jostled weekend guests.
Each member of the Bliss family—rich, Bohemian, and self-indulgent—decides independently to invite a guest to their country house in Cookham, England, for the weekend. Matriarch and retired actress Judith (Merle Moores) tempts young devotee Sandy (Kyle Hatley), while her novelist husband David (John Rensenhouse) asks a pretty but air-headed flapper named Jackie (Colleen Grate) to stay. Their son Simon (Seth Golay) invites “vamp” Myra (Vanessa Severo), and daughter Sorel (Emily Peterson) extends her hospitality to diplomatist Richard (Brian Paulette). Maid Clara (Julie Shaw), Judith’s former dresser, runs about pretending to serve and clean as the family strings along its guests through a series of increasingly self-centered and comically awkward intrigues. It’s hard not to imagine playwright Coward, known for his own rather egocentric image, pompously guffawing at his own genius as he crafted this high-society romp.
Weaver’s staging techniques for the reading give audience members enough visuals to imagine their own version of the set, costumes, and blocking in their heads. The experience is almost like having a book read to you by great actors, but with the bonus of seeing before you their expressions and pantomime interactions with one another. Licia Watson reads Coward’s stage directions from stage right as cast members move between music stands with their scripts.
It’s hard to find a weak member of this cast. Moores, Rensenhouse, Golay and Peterson gel so well that we see them as an authentic Bliss family unit, oddly functional in its dysfunction. They flaunt affected, over-enunciated British accents and make everything into a game. Moores knows how to lay on the melodrama as Judith by extending her vowels and manipulating her posture to great effect. Peterson’s drawling yet enchanting Sorel lets loose some of the best lines, including, “We are a beastly family, and I hate us.” Golay manages to balance Simon’s seeming self-awareness (at least compared to the rest of the family) and outright manipulations by alternating between wide-eyed innocence and frank sarcasm. Rensenhouse, as man-of-the-house David, delights in himself through occasional, fast-delivered quips—the scene in which he woos Severo (as Myra) is a great moment of comedic rhythm for both actors.
As for the guests, Paulette and Grate, as Richard and Jackie, respectively, have the awkward pause down to a science. Hatley embraces no-brains jock Sandy by playing up the character’s “big hands” (at the mention of this, he extends them largely over his music stand) and partiality for saying, “Raaather!” Shaw stomps about the stage as if always in a busy fury, a choice that highlights the fact that Clara actually does nothing around the house.
Eventually, Myra erupts at the Bliss family (a moment for Severo’s acting to shine) and accuses them of being “artificial to the point of lunacy.” In the end, we discover the whole summer weekend has been one big game, but EARTh’s expert cast treats Hay Fever as anything but.
EARTh’s upcoming Series Two, one-night productions include Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday on Feb. 13 and George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance on April 30.
REVIEW:
EARTh (Equity Actors’ Readers’ Theatre)
Hay Fever
Monday, January 9, 2012 (single performance)
St. Theresa’s Academy Auditorium
5600 Main Street, Kansas City, MO
For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/EARTh-Equity-Actors-Readers-Theatre/167718783267792
Top Photo: Merle Moores
Theatre Contributor
Jessica Showers, a long-time believer in the collaborative power of the performing arts, is a Midwest native and Kansas City-based arts journalist. She is on the editorial board for The Sondheim Review, a quarterly magazine dedicated to the work of renowned composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Jessica received a master's degree in arts journalism with a focus in theatre from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. As part of her graduate coursework, Jessica partnered with Charleston, S.C.'s daily paper The Post and Courier to cover theatre at Spoleto Festival USA. She also interned in New York City for American Theatre magazine and for Syracuse Stage, Syracuse, N.Y.'s local LORT theatre organization. Jessica looks forward to delving into Kansas City's wealth of theatricality and sharing it with KCM's readers.
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