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It's good to
have director Alec Doyle back at work in Venice, his previous
works being done at Beyond Baroque, just next door to Pacific
Resident Theater where he is now directing another PRT hit, Jean
Anouilh's rarely performed social comedy, "Ardele."
The collection of misbegotten adulterous souls of 1912 is led
by the bombastic General, played with boundless energy by Richard
Fancy . Despite a couple of missed lines, he busily bosses everyone
around while his invalid wife Emily, in this case more emotionally
invalidated than a physical invalid, screams out his name every
10 minutes. This out of her completely correct assumption that
he is off somewhere with yet another woman. When poor Emily,
played by Sharron Shayne, finally appears, she is just a little
too plugged into the mating habits of the universe for her own
good and her hysteria in front of the entire family makes for
a great scene. With quotes like "It takes a certain greatness
to be truly base," and the classic, "Something tells
me we're going astray," you can visualize the air of pomposity
as a house full of characters make asses of themselves. The glacial
maid, Ada, played by Cheryl Dooley, couldn't care less about
the General, but indulges him. Meanwhile, his sister, the Countess,
played by a brisk and in-charge Kathleen Garrett, arrives with
her husband, Gaston, Michael Rothhaar -- and with her insecure
extra-marrital liaison, Villardieu, played by the toothy-grinned
Dudley Do-Right-ish Robert Lee Jacobs. The intimidated Gaston,
meanwhile, has his little powderpuff stashed in town until he
can get out to see her and sneaks phone calls only to hear her
threaten suicide.And there's also Natalie and Nicholas (Shannon
Fill and David Rogge) who should've married but didn't, and now
are caught in the passion of regret. All of these blind obsessives
are there to discuss what's happened with the never seen Aunt
Ardele, now that she's fallen in love. This bittersweet situation
illuminates this family's foolishness. In the end, the seeds
of the misbegotten have been sown, as all of this base behavior
is dutifully copied by the youngest members of the family, a
boy and girl (Jessie Clemens and Will Rothhaar) who act out the
twisted love/hate relationships of their darling progenitors.
Kurt Wahlner's set makes the most out of a little space by creating
an upstairs/downstairs, with Deena Lynn Mullen's effective lighting,
Alexander Enberg's plentiful sound effects and Audrey Eisner's
costumes.
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