Photos courtesy of Long Beach Playhouse.
Even a great playwright has to start somewhere and for George Bernard Shaw, unquestionably one of the best to ever write for the theater, that somewhere was a good ways ahead of the work he would become most famous for.
The Philanderer, currently in a production on the Long Beach Playhouse’s Mainstage, was the second play Shaw ever wrote. While many of the elements that make his classic works so thrilling are found within, they present themselves in ways that feel less cohesive and integrated than they do in his classics. This is not to say that The Philanderer is a particularly bad play; it just proves to be, at least in its current incarnation here at The Playhouse, more of a diversion than entertainment.
Leonard Charteris (Andy Gerges) is the philanderer of the title and his conflicts are said to be based on Shaw’s real life experiences with women. This is interesting in theory, but unfortunately, Charteris is fairly thin as a character. He is nimble and quick-witted thought the play, but his true opinions of just about everything in his life, romantic or philosophical, are never made clear enough to be taken seriously. This keeps Charteris a curious and rather elusive figure as well as a strangely obtuse protagonist.
At the beginning of the play, we find Charteris caught in between two women. The first is an older window named Grace Tranfield (Sarah Green) who fully embodies the modern woman of the times but ironically doesn’t make a show of her modernity in the way the play’s other female characters do. The second is a coquettish, younger woman by the name of Julia Craven (Darcy Porter-Phillips), whose emotional highs and lows cause a constant display of irrationality and temper tantrums that keep her trapped in the confines of the stereotypical female of the day, in spite of her insistence that she is open minded and progressive.
Charteris is likely not in love with either of the two woman in his life, yet both women are in love with him. Besides this conundrum there is very little conflict in The Philanderer and unfortunately this is to the play’s detriment. It is chock full of ideas and themes of importance for which Shaw is known: gender roles, the hypocrisy of science and doctors, the conflict of emotion versus intellect, the difference between old world and new world values etc., but unfortunately this leads to more wit than emotion and more talk than action.
The playhouse’s production is uniform and prim, with all of the actors pulling their weight and doing a serviceable job. Unfortunately though, none of them are able to elevate their characters beyond the realm of two dimensions in either a believably dramatic or overtly satirical style.
Sarah Green’s Grace comes the furthest, with a sense of composure that is convincing for the period and for her widowed character. Though she is not given quite enough material to transform her Grace into a full-blooded creature, she none the less makes the best of what she has, creating an interpretation that is sure footed in a cast of characters burdened with too much to say and not enough to show.
Andy Gerges is smirky, quick and entertaining as Charteris, with fine stature and a pretty believable accent, but he doesn’t let us see much beneath Charteris’s surface or suggest that there is something unspoken or real hidden inside of him. If Charteris is a real person and not a caricature, he must feel one way or the other about his stance in life and have an ultimate opinion concerning the two women he is making so much effort to entertain. There must be some cosmic fire in his heart or ultimate fear of loneliness that makes him behave the way he does. If not, there must be something so deliriously satirical about the way his is portrayed for him to be believable. Unfortunately here, neither of these choices is made.
Ken Dalena and Douglas Seagraves play well off of each other and get a good deal of laughs as both of the lead women’s fathers. Their fixations with the old world keep their characters soundly out of touch with the present one, however, a fact that makes them hard to take very seriously, in spite of their entertaining observations.
Cort Huckabone plays Dr. Paramore, a doctor more concerned with his own successful diagnoses than he is with his patients actual well being, and more in love with Julia than he is concerned with his success. Huckabone’s performance is at times quite enjoyable, but he is ultimately too cartoonish to fit into the realm of the rest of the play, a fault not fully his own, as the portrayal of his character suggests one of the two directions it seems the entirety of this production should have gone.
Amara Phelps brings an admirable sense of restraint to the role of Julia’s androgynous younger sister Amara and her droll sense of humor is refreshing, but when up against such animated and obsessive characters, she constantly feels out of place in The Philanderer, like a character in another play.
Speaking of Julia, it is Darcy Porter-Phillips portrayal of her that I had the hardest time with. While Miss Phillips’ type is perfect for the role, her theatrics are so thoroughly calculated and her affectations are dialed up so high that I was constantly left wondering what it is she actually feels or thinks about under all of that built up artifice. Does she really love Charteris? Does her disdain for being treated like a child ever once register deep enough to make her consider her irrational behavior? Does the cartoonish facade she relies on through out the play conceal something deeper, more tragic or even ridiculous? These are all questions I was left with at the play’s conclusion.
Elaine Herman directs this current production and she uses the space well and has a good feel for Shaw’s timing. Unfortunately however, her version is unfocussed in terms of its tone, as if no real concept or statement lays at the core of this interpretation. When the set changes (some really creative and clever work by Greg Fritsche) become the most exciting element of the show, you know that something is a little off.
The Philanderer is too indebted to the time it was written, with an ongoing allusion to Henrik Ibsen and the deep impact he had on the social structure of sexes in the late 1880’s, to feel pressing or even particularly relevant without some serious guidance. An educated theater going audience should know who Ibsen is (his play, A Doll’s House, was the most performed play of the 20th century) and understand the gist of the impact he had on the perception of females of his era.This Ibsen obsession feels more than a little out of place today however, and without the proper tone or context to make it relevant to present day audiences, becoming invested in The Philanderer is a bit of a struggle.
Imagine a play about society during the peak of Oprah’s popularity being seen 100 or so years from now. Now imagine that play without any background information on who she was, assuming that you already knew everything there was to know about her going in to see it and you may begin to see the conflict in staging The Philander today.
As an artifact from the era of its creation, The Philanderer definitely offers some insight into what was in vogue in 1889, yet without solid choices to explore the absurdity of these characters inner workings in either a totally earnest or over the top satirical sort of way, The Philanderer ultimately comes across as a piece of theater that is rarely mounted for a reason.
The Philanderer is currently in production at the Long Beach Playhouse, located at 5021 E. Anaheim. It runs through June 21. Tickets can be purchased here.
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