[NEohioPAL] Review of "Oh Dad, Poor Dad..." at Summer Stages

[Bob Abelman]

'Oh Dad' is an oh-so-fun absurdist comedy

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 7/23/10

 

The brain trust at Summer Stages found the perfect complement to its repertory of a Kander and Ebb musical mystery parody and a sober drama about a man inflicted with neurofibromatosis.  It is the wildly absurd gothic comedy Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad by Arthur Kopit.

 

This thoroughly deranged and delightful one-act, whose title runs nearly as long as its storytelling, features an elegantly monstrous woman who keeps her husband's coffin at her bedside, his body in the closet, and her grown son attached to her apron strings.

 

It is directed by Scott Spence with just the right flair for the theatrical, the right touch of the horrific and a wonderful sense of humor.  

 

The play begins as the family moves into their hotel suite in the Caribbean along with their cargo, which includes a cat-eating piranha named Rosalinda (played by Amy Schwabauer, staring out of a fishbowl) and two man-eating Venus flytrap plants (played by the constantly glaring Tania Benites and Katie McMillen).  

 

Actually, "moves into" does a disservice to the way Madame Rosepettle, played to the hilt by the magnificent Everett Quinton in drag, enters at the top of the play. 

 

She saunters onto the stage the way larger-than-life, aging and insane film star Norma Desmond strides toward the movie camera and says "All right Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up" in the film Sunset Boulevard.   Her eyes are ablaze, her curled lips reveal a toothy madwoman's snarl, and her body dramatically enters the room ten minutes before the rest of her does.  

 

Another disservice would be to focus on the story in Oh Dad.  This play and others written in the absurdist, avant garde tradition of the 1960s, including works by Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett, are more about how things transpire than what transpires. They are all about the language and less about the action.

 

In Oh Dad, Madame Rosepettle uses language like a weapon, employing a string of sentences when one would do.  With Quinton at the helm, her steady stream of dark, venomous and melodramatic hyperbole spews like projectile vomiting.  Each word is more acidic and on target than the next. 

 

Quinton's performance is as hilarious as it is mesmerizing, giving us not only some of the best moments in this season's Summer Stages repertory but some of the best moments in Cleveland professional theater.

 

Keeping pace is Eric Perusek's incredible portrayal of Madame's socially underdeveloped son Jonathan.  Perusek gives his character's severe psychological damage a startling physicality, allowing Jonathan's nervous stutter to manifest itself in palsied movement and facial tics.  Each difficult word fighting to the surface appears to cause both emotional and physical pain.

 

George Roth as Commodore Roseabove, who attempts to seduce the Madame but is in turn seduced, and Jillian Bumpas as Rosalie, who attempts to seduce Jonathan but is in turn strangled, are also absolutely wonderful.  Roth is particularly astute at making every moment on stage count and adds so much to this production. 

 

Russ Borski's scenic, lighting and properties designs offer all the requisite clichés for a hotel room in an absurdist farce, including an ax on the wall begging to be used, spontaneous light shifts to reflect changes in a character's intentions, and plenty of doors for dramatic passage. 

 

Not one to pass up an opportunity to add to the play's ludicrousness, Spence cleverly choreographs set changes in full view of the audience, performed by actors playing bell boys and accompanied by the familiar strains of Rimsky-Korsakov 's "Flight of the Bumble Bee" (played forward and backward) and Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance."

 

Spence even includes an intermission in this one-act play to give audience members an opportunity to catch their collective breath and gather themselves.  

 

There is some wonderful stuff happening at Summer Stages, and the best of it can be found in Oh Dad.

.  

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad continues in repertory through August 5 at the Factory Theater on East 24th Street in downtown Cleveland.  For tickets, $10 to $15, call 216-687-2109 or visit http://csu.ticketleap.com.  
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