The Alley Theatre revived The Man Who Came to Dinner with a lavish set and a delightfully eccentric cast of experienced hands, but this classic comedy is dated by 70-year-old dialogue.
Eccentric radio personality Sheridan Whiteside breaks his hip, and the doctor orders him to take a 10-day holiday from his professional traveling. The endearingly sheltered Stanley family is all-too-happy to let Whiteside rest on the living room couch.
However, the Stanleys regret their decision when their own living room becomes ground zero of a whirligig of celebrity scandals.
The lavish, comfortable living room that encompasses the play’s events cannot be praised enough. In an age that celebrates bare, sparse sets, it is a joy to see an oak-furnished living room set complete with sofas, lamps, desks, piano, stained-glass dining room doors and a staircase. A green lamp decorates a cherry oak desk with piles of folders and documents while a grandfather clock stands on a landing that easily could have been left bare for half of the audience.
The characters’ costumes and makeup are less spectacular, but this should come as no surprise for a play set in a family living room during the end of the Great Depression.
The play prefers to celebrate comic extremes in costuming. Josie de Guzman takes on a powder-white face to complement her frigid persona as Whiteside’s embittered secretary Maggie Cutler, while a starlet saunters in the living room in a sequined gown trailing two raccoon tails.
The play piles on the wit as characters tear each other apart with mile-a-minute references to names and incidents contemporary of the time, such as the Lindbergh baby and Walt Disney’s box office failure Fantasia.
Unfortunately, most of this play’s humor hinges on dated references to 1930s celebrities and goings-ons that would elude even the cultured Alley demographic. Our generation connects with Sean Connery and Halle Berry better than faded names like Greta Garbo and Clark Gable.
Purists may call this blasphemy, but it is a shame to listen to the dozens of old names and events dropped into stale one-liners that had the potential to send the house roaring with laughter.
Another issue arises with the totally unsympathetic Whiteside, our lead man-child.
Smart alecks entertain viewers because they personify everyone’s desire to belt out a silencing insult, but Whiteside comes across as a spoiled child who launches sociopathic conspiracies against people who go out of their way to help him.
At least the play acknowledges Whiteside’s emotional bankruptcy by failing to portray a single constant, non-professional contact in his life, despite the barrage of gifts and niceties from colleagues who simply could not be bothered to visit him on Christmas Eve.
A few lingering glowers betray Whiteside’s festering bitterness about his life, which is an internal struggle other characters hate. In fact, the play catches every single character amidst a personal battle against outdated habits and external status quos, all of which are cruelly defended by conservative parents and catty starlets.
Behind the dated menagerie of famous freaks and witty one-liners is a timeless comedy about humanity’s merciless force of habit and the well-intended enemies in one’s own friends and family.
