Aging with humor and courage in Noel Coward Toganga production
Noel Coward’s Waiting in the Wings, currently at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum through Sat., Oct. 3, premiered in London 66 years ago this past August. Coward’s longtime producer had turned it down as “old-fashioned,” and only the herculean efforts of Michael Redgrave and Sybil Thorndike, who starred in the production, got the show produced.
While London audiences were moderately enthusiastic about the play, critics were not. Coward wrote that opening the newspapers to read the reviews was like “having his face slashed with a razor.” His (then still closeted) partner Graham Payn, playing the young male lead, got reviews that were so bad that he retired from the stage once the play closed. Set in an English retirement home for actresses, “Wings” lost money, and plans for an American production were dropped. Four decades later, Lauren Bacall and Rosemary Harris starred in a Broadway revival directed by Michael Langham that “never got off the ground,” according to Vincent Canby in the New York Times.
Yet Coward had a certain affection for the play, which revolves around a long-standing feud between two rivals (regarding who stole whose husband) and includes much gossip about the theater, onstage and off (think “Stage Door” meets “The Golden Girls”), as well as some insights into aging.
“I wrote ‘Waiting in the Wings’,” said Coward, “with loving care and absolute belief in its characters. I consider that the reconciliation between “Lotta” and “May” [the two rivals]… and the meeting of Lotta and her son in Act Three… are two of the best scenes I have ever written. I consider that the play as a whole contains, beneath the froth of some of its lighter moments, the basic truth that old age needn’t be nearly so dreary and sad as it is supposed to be, provided you greet it with humor and live it with courage.”
The Topanga production is long on courage, humor, and warmth. While the large cast is often drowned out by crickets and hampered by British accents that couldn’t be found anywhere in the Empire, they bring a kindness and caring to the ensemble work that almost salvages Coward’s plodding script. All the women are good, with Susan Angelo and Jan Wikstrom as the dueling divas drawing every nuance they can from Coward’s paper-thin characterizations.
Ellen Geer gives a touching turn as a resident with dementia who has a dangerous love of matches. The odd choice to turn Deirdre, the Irish Catholic Cassandra of doom in the play, into a Black American Pearl Bailey-ish one (who would have done what in the British theater between the wars?) gives Earnestine Phillips plenty to chew on, but makes no sense given the world of the play.
The Broadway production cut over half an hour running time in out-of-town tryouts before opening in New York. The Topanga production might consider doing this before it closes in October. Still, the production captures what Sheridan Morley wrote about the play in his introduction to Coward’s collected works:
“‘Waiting in the Wings’ has moments of near-Chekhovian dignity and melancholy, and insights into the process of aging for people who have made careers out of youth.”
Those moments almost make it worth it.
THE INDEPENDENT SHAKESPEARE CO. performed “The Comedy of Errors” on Aug. 19, delighting crowds with excellent acting, wonderful design, and lots of laughs on a hot summer evening.
The Will Geer has four other shows running this season: a Romeo and Juliet set in New York’s Gilded Age (to Sept. 26), Treasure Island (to Oct. 3), their classic Midsummer Night’s Dream (to Oct. 10), and the premiere of Bernard Cubría’s new play, The People of Pompeii, about the Topanga fires (to Oct. 4). (theatricum.com; 310-455-3723)
Our other summer stalwarts, the Independent Shakespeare Company, just closed a rousing, Brechtian version of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, one of the Bard’s more difficult tragedies. If the maturity and depth that the company showed here carries over to the more family-friendly, music-filled, Comedy of Errors, then we shall have ourselves a summer of true delights! (to Sept. 6; tinyurl.com/34ueum23)
What to Watch For
The Arsonists, Max Frisch’s scathing look at our capacity to ignore the obvious, is at the Skylight Theatre from Thur., Sept. 3, to Sat. Sept 20; skylighttheatre.org/the-arsonists;
The Odyssey Theatre hosts Bart DeLorenzo’s adaptation of Ibsen’s timely Enemy of the People, Sat., Aug 22 to Sun. Sept. 27; odysseytheatre.com; 310-477-2055 ext. 2;
Rogue Machine presents the L.A. premiere of A Case for the Existence of God, the N.Y. Drama Critics’ Circle Award-winning play, Sat., Sept. 5, to Sun. Oct. 11, at the Matrix theater; roguemachine.ludus.com;
Anne G. Byrd stars in Winter’s Bench, a meditation on nature, aging, and hope at the 24th Street Theater; Sat., Sept. 5, to Sun., Oct. 25; 24thstreet.org; 213-745-6516;
The Echo Theater Company presents the world premiere of Emmy-nominated Janine Nabers darkly funny The Peterson Show; Sat., Sept. 19, to Mon., Oct. 26; 747-350-8066; echotheatercompany.com.
Category: Entertainment
