‘Yesterday’ leaps for present but stays stuck in past
Bully in 1946 comedy relevant now, but female hero in politics is dated
If there were any time to remount Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday,” it’s now. Lines written in 1946 could have been penned for us: “Too many crackpots around with their foot in the White House door.” “The curse of civilization: Don’t-care-ism.” “You’ve got damn near all the oil and the lumber and the steel and coal and aluminum — what do you want now — all the people? All the laws?”
In San Francisco Playhouse’s production of the comedy, which I saw Friday, Feb. 2, Michael Torres makes bossman Harry Brock an all-too-clear analogue for 2018’s most notorious bully. As the show opens, this junkyard millionaire revels in a Washington hotel room so fancy the sconces have crystals hanging from them like they’re the queen’s jewels, and the windows look down upon the Capitol dome, as if Congress were just waiting to be taken over by the
bribe-wielding Brock. ( Jacquelyn Scott did the beautiful, canny set.)
Yet this supposedly wealthy, powerful strongman has a hissy fit at the hint of a slight. In case that gargantuan insecurity didn’t already remind you of a certain goon-in-chief, Torres gives Brock a barking East Coast accent that’s liable to trigger your election PTSD flashbacks.
Squawk for squawk and folly for folly, Torres as Brock is impeccably matched by Millie Brooks as Billie Dawn, Brock’s moll, who has somehow made it this far in life without learning what the Supreme Court is. If the whole show, which is directed by Susi Damilano, were just the two of these comic virtuosos circling each other like sharks, each socking the other with a new “why I oughta” every couple of seconds, the production would be a ceaseless delight.
But for all its chilling contemporary relevance, “Born Yesterday” drags. Improbably, the plot hinges on Brock’s recruiting a nosy reporter, Paul ( Jason Kapoor), to fix Billie’s coarse showgirl manners so that she fits in with the crowd of the senator (Louis Parnell) from whom Brock’s trying to wring an advantageous law. But a premise that should take only a scene to set up stretches into a whole first act.
In the second one, Paul and Billie spend so much time chatting aimlessly that even Brooks’ perfectly pitched delivery can’t save it (and Kapoor’s delivery, distractingly blank, doesn’t help either). The trouble is that nothing changes. The first act has already established that the two (surprise!) have the hots for each other, and Damilano’s direction doesn’t find revelations, shifts in the balance of power or new stakes to keep things dynamic. It’s as if the pair are cycling through some of Paul’s pet intellectual interests — democratic theory, the perils of power — merely to mark time.
Just in making a woman the hero of a story about corruption in politics, “Born Yesterday” was bold for its time. Yet many period touches grate on modern ears. The flawless Paul pours his ideas into Billie as if she’s a mere vessel. The script never lets her question him. Magically, she was perceptive all along beneath her bimbo veneer; she just needed a man to validate her.
Since “A Doll’s House,” Western drama has told plenty of stories about women awakening to and breaking free of their oppression. But in 2018, we need plays that begin with freedom at least partially won. Toward the end of “Born Yesterday,” Billie tells Brock, “Some people are always giving it and some taking. And it’s not fair. So I’m not going to let you any more. Or anybody else.”
Sounds simple in theory, Billie. But what does that look like, and how does that work out for you?