Well-paced ‘Born Yesterday’ welcome as summer breeze
A crude-talking business man tries to have his way with Washington so he can enlarge his already obscene fortune. Sound familiar?
Just as the dramatic season of presidential primaries comes to a close so too does the Alley Theatre’s regular season, and with the canny choice of Garson Kanin’s 1946 “Born Yesterday,” which runs through July 3.
Partly a drama of political corruption, partly a rehashing of Pygmalion, “Born Yesterday” offers audiences a little philosophy, a little patriotism and, in spite of some uneven performances, a lot of laughs in an energetic, well-paced production crafted for a crowd eager for summer.
The story revolves around the plans of Harry Brock, a man who always gets what he wants. He’s risen from the ghettos to the grand hotels, from collecting junk on the streets to making millions from mining junk yards for scrap metal. Brock’s a man with a heart made for gold, and he’s salivating over all the salvage profiteering made possible in Europe in the wake of the devastation of World War II.
His $50 million fortune — the equivalent of roughly $600 million today — allows him the luxury of living in a swank D.C. hotel where Brock settles in with his brother and lawyer Eddie to bribe a senator to craft legislation to allow him ever greater profits. “I’m gonna fix it so I can do what I want where I want when I want!” he cries.
Brock may not actually be the Donald Trump of 1946, but he does travel with his former chorus girl paramour, Billie, who needs social graces to fit in with senatorial society. To acclimate her to the scene, Brock hires journalist Paul Verrall to tutor her. Let’s just say she really takes to her education.
Much humor in the play rests in malapropisms and other moments of Billie’s, or Brock’s ignorance. You can only take the mistaking of peninsula for penicillin so far, but this also is where the primarily lighthearted play is perhaps most political. After one character insists, “A world full of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in,” a little murmur arose in the audience. And there was a good measure of laughter when Eddie insists there are “too many honest men” in Washington D.C. to suit Brock’s agenda.
“Born Yesterday” has a very complete look and feel largely thanks to the opulent scenic design of Hugh Landwehr. The two-level hotel room has the bronze and brazen glamor of mid-20th century America. The production also has a great sound thanks to Cliff Caruthers. As we waited for the performance to start, we were serenaded by Ivory Joe Hunter’s “It’s a Doggone Crying Shame,” and a series of big band favorites.
Stephen Pelinski plays with gusto the crass Brock, who is a slap-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of guy with a short temper and a taste for booze. With a name like “Harry Brock” it’s hard to see why he would go so Mafioso, but whether this is indicated in the play script or is a directorial choice, it seemed not ideal and resulted in some unstable diction.
Melissa Pritchett, the alluring Billie, too suffered from what seemed to be directorial choices about diction. She plays the part with that high-pitched 1940s dame sort of voice immortalized in “Guys and Dolls.” This was impossible to sustain throughout the performance.
Where Pritchett exceled was when she maximized the physical comedy in “Born Yesterday.” When Brock and Billie sit down to play gin rummy, she is irresistible. She swirls the ice cubes in her glass and flourishes it excessively, several times. Silently, she counts out the cards as she deals, mouthing “1 and 1 and 2 and 2,” as Brock’s frustration mounts. Suddenly she’s humming “Anything Goes” in the most irritating and appealing manner.
Jay Sullivan makes an endearing Verrall who, though immediately attracted to Billie, comes to fall in love with the curiosity and passion awakened in her as she learns his ways of higher society. And the Alley can always rely on Jeffrey Bean who exposes the moral conflict in Eddie, a man who drinks constantly to assuage the guilt of enabling his brother’s scams.
Emily Trask, as Helen the hotel maid, proves the truism that no part is a bit part. Although rarely present, she manages to be the soul of the working people, slinging out a great line about disliking novels built around the problems of rich people while serving drinks, fluffing cushions and scurrying away from the escalating melodrama.
“Born Yesterday” ends with an easy victory for its idealistic lovers and some facile political platitudes: “When you steal from the government you steal from yourself, stupid.”
Sadly, stupid still plays in politics. If only some candidates were as well read as Billie.