 |
| The cast of A Proper Place (Mark Kitaoka) |
A Proper Place
Village Theatre
Issaquah: Through April 23, 2017, Everett: April 28-May 21,
2017
If you don’t think about the substance of the brand new
musical, A Proper Place, making its
world premiere at Village Theatre, you can enjoy the peppy songs and (as usual)
impeccable cast and have a pretty good time.
The story is based on J.M. Barrie’s 1902 play, The Admirable Crichton. Barrie wrote the
much more famous Peter Pan books and
plays. An upper crust British family goes on a cruise in their pleasure boat
with a skeleton servant crew. They’re blown off course and land on an island
with little hope of rescue.
None of the wealthy family knows a thing about survival, so
they depend on their butler and a scullery maid/turned resourceful ladies’ maid
to manage shelter and food and everything else. How the butler and maid know
how to survive is an open question, but again, if you don’t look at it very
hard, it’s just a stereotype and can be fun.
It turns out that the butler, Kevin Vortmann, doesn’t just know a little about how to survive, he’s actually a master at devising better housing, better feeding, and even better clothing than anyone can imagine. It’s a bit of magical stagework. (Vortmann had to step in at the last minute due to injury, but carries the entire show as if cast originally! He’s got a strong, clear voice and leading man carriage. It’s great to be introduced to him and we hope to see him again in Seattle!)
So, the idea is that it pits the butler’s own training of
the rightness of society being bifurcated into “upper crust” and “servant class”
against the realization that on the island, he’s really in charge. The “proper
place” of society depends, then, on circumstance.
If this musical were adapted in the mid-1930s, it would by
now be a cute classic, perhaps. However, even though writers Leslie Becker and Curtis Rhodes try to infuse 2017 sentiments into the script, giving
the characters a wake-up call about their own prejudices, it doesn’t go nearly
far enough in that direction to deserve the hoped-for kudos of a brand new
musical that covers a properly updated sensibility.
Those who have been steeped in Downton Abbey and their butler’s insistence on the proper way to
run an aristocratic household will recognize a similarity. But Downton Abbey was actually focused on
meticulously recreating how that world was, not on commenting on what it could
change.
The island segments of the musical could have been filled
with what it took to learn to exist in this new environment, rather than a
pseudo-power struggle with the “lord of the manor” and the butler. There’s
plenty of potential humor to be had there.
Ultimately, what is the likeliest reason for this lack of
updating is a too-faithful rendering of the book’s story. Instead, the writers
could revamp the story by focusing on the humor of having early 19th Century
characters take on 21st Century values, perhaps. I would bet the book is out of
copyright protection by now.
There are three daughters: Chelsea LeValley, Sara
Bordenet and Krista Curry, with
LeValley getting to shine in her first lead role on Village’s main stage. Lord
Loam is the always steady Hugh Hastings.
Randy Scholz plays a foppish cousin
who gets some of the humor load. David
Caldwell is a compassionate clergyman. Sophia
Franzella stands out as the scullery-maid-with-the-mostest, making the most
of the plucky character and the laughs. The talented ensemble gets to go back
and forth between servants and society gabsters.
They’ve made an engaging production here, and if that’s what
you’re looking for, then have fun. If you’re concerned about stereotypes being
reaffirmed or the awkwardness of a butler justifying his attraction to the
eldest daughter “because on the island” he is “king,” and that makes you feel
queasy about men thinking women owe them by virtue of position, you might want
to skip it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
This is a moderated comment section. Any comment can be deleted if the moderator feels that basic civility standards are not being met. Disagreements, however, if respectfully stated, are certainly welcome. Just keep the discussion intelligent and relatively kind.