TheatreDate.com Reviews

In the spring of 1939 one of the most daring Hollywood producers of the day, David O. Selznick, began production of what would one day become one of the greatest Hollywood epics of all time.

Everyone he knew told him it would be a turkey.

But he was determined to see it through. Still, after one week of production on the film “Gone With the Wind,” he saw his vision of the story falling apart.

After just one week of production he halted the shooting of the film, fired his director and threw out his original screenplay.

He needed a new script and a new director and he needed them both fast. He turned to longtime friend and screenwriter Ben Hecht, who met with Selznick in his office early one Monday morning. Director Victor Fleming soon joined the two. What happened next has gone down as one of the strangest myths of Hollywood screenwriting.

The play “Moonlight and Magnolias” showing at the Paradise Theater on the Ridge explores what might have happened on that spring morning and the events of the subsequent days. Legend has is that Selznick kept Hecht and Fleming prisoners, locking himself and his two cohorts in his office until the new script was written.

Feeding his prisoners nothing but bananas and peanuts for five days Selznick and Fleming act out the novel in its entirety for Hecht, who hasn’t read any of the book with the exception of the first page.

The play is delightfully funny and the actors wonderfully charismatic. Selznick (played by Richard Lauson) is quirky and crazy. He seems unconcerned that his writer hasn’t read the book upon which the movie is being made, and acts blasé about shutting down production. But the audience gets the sense that his nonchalance is all a performance for the benefit of his coworkers. Lauson gives Selznick sudden eruptions of anger and agitation, adding to the complexity of producer’s character.

His interaction with Hecht (played by Michael Clemens) is uproariously funny at times and darkly meaningful at others. Hecht tries to act as Selznick’s conscience, reminding him of his responsibly as a Jew to tell audience members of the injustice of tyranny and oppression. As he becomes familiar with the storyline of the book his sympathy remains with the slaves and not with the main characters of the book, the elite southern landowners. Hecht draws parallels between the slave owners of the south and the tyranny of the Nazi invasion that was sweeping through Europe at the time.

Clemens was wonderful to watch. His portrayal of the cynical Hollywood screenwriter was immaculate. At the start of the second act all three men are ragged and tired. The office is strewn with the peanut shells and banana peals. Crumpled paper is everywhere and Hecht is asleep at the desk, comically typing involuntarily. Clemens looked as though he was genuinely and simultaneously going crazy and falling apart.

And then there was Victor Fleming (played by Jim Allison). Allison’s portrayal of the rough and tumble chauffeur turned director was an entertaining counter point to Selznick’s eccentricity and Hecht’s cynicism. While acting out the book for the benefit of the writer, he hams up many of the characters of the novel. Most memorably perhaps is his portrayal of the pregnant Melanie while Selznick danced around excitedly, acting out the part of the fiery heroin Scarlett.

Finally there is the small but important role of Miss Poppenghul (played by Teresa Hurley) Selznick’s secretary. She enters the office to replenish the peanut supply and tidy things up from time to time and seems almost more effected by the stress of the situation then the men actually being held against their will.

The play is well written, well produced and well cast. The set is by far one the best I’ve seen, full of the kind of details necessary for a set in such an intimate theater.

Director of the play Judy Clemens talked about the appeal of the Ron Hutchinson play.

“It’s really a great, great, great script,” she said. “It was the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. I love the whole concept of the show.”

The challenge of directing a play with such a small cast didn’t slow her down at all, she said. She relished the chance to work with the actors to make the script come to life.

“I like working with smaller casts with a really meaty script,” she said. “It (the script) just makes me laugh, it makes me laugh out loud.”

Equal parts eerie and elegant, strange and beautiful, the show “Goblin Market,” now playing at the Blue Room captures something both childish and erotic.

Based on a poem supposedly written for children by Christina Rossetti, the adaptation by Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon is full of overtly sexual undertones. An alluring blend of music, poetry and prose, the show is experimental and edgy, the kind of daring performance the Blue Room is justly known for.

The two women show tells the story of a pair of sisters, Laura (played by Allison Rich), and Lizzy (played by Ashley Mauerhan). The play begins in song, with the two adult Victorian era women returning to their childhood nursery.

Together they are magically transported back to childhood and their room is transformed to a woody glen, a wilderness inhabited by fruit gobbling goblins. Laura is enticed by the fruity offerings, Lizzy wary. The diametrically opposed personalities of the sisters are illustrated by the difference in their costumes, Laura wearing black lingerie with hell-fire red fringe, and innocent Lizzy gingerly sporting virginal pink and white.

The two are transported through the childhood fairyland and ushered on by absinth and alluring recollections of adolescence.

Like all good poetry the message is mired in language and metaphoric imagery, leaving the audience to draw what they will from the performance.

The show itself has been bouncing around the Blue Room for over a year, the idea kicked from hand to hand, Rich said. It finally found a home in the directorial dome of David Davalos, and the script landed in Rich’s lap.

“I fell in love with it, you know,” she said. “The language is so beautiful.”

Joe Hilsee gave her the script and music and asked her to find another performer who could join her in the show, she said. Having just worked with Mauerhan at a production for Chico State she proposed the part to her.

“I went to Ashley ’cause she’s perfect,” she said. “Her voice is just perfect for this role.”

Mauerhan is perfect for the part, but she was apprehensive before opening night.

“I was nervous all day,” she admitted.

Part of her apprehension comes from the fact that her role calls for nudity during the climactic song of the show, and she was more nervous about the exposure then the notes, she said.

“It [the nudity] kind of works to work with the nervous energy,” she explained.

The show is a wonderful and highly experimental piece of poetic play work. Maybe not a family show if you’re uncomfortable with your kids seeing flesh, but still a show that should satisfy all age groups. Rich in meaning and very imaginative, the show is full of playful imagery. Everything in the performance has its place.

“It’s wonderful,” Mauerhan said of the staging. “Everything has a point. There’s nothing that doesn’t have meaning on stage.”