Third time around for Soulpepper’s production of meta theatre classic
The Play’s the Thing
(out of 4) Written by Ferenc Molnar. Adapted by P.G. Wodehouse. Directed by Laszlo Marton. Until October 14 at The Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank House Lane. soulpepper.ca or 416-203-6264. This is an especially good time to bring back Ferenc Molnar’s 1926 comedy The Play’s the Thing in all its meta charm.
Aplay about playwrights and actors using the tropes of theatre to solve a melodramatic romantic mishap is self-aware enough to match our modern tastes and feed the nostalgia of audience members who remember Soulpepper’s first two productions in 1999 and 2003.
Director Laszlo Marton returns for the third time as the director, while Diego Matamoros reprises his role as playwright Sandor Turai.
Turai and his collaborator Mansky (William Webster, also reprising his role for the third time), their composer protégé Albert Adam (an adorable Gordon Hecht) and Albert’s fiancée and star of their upcoming operetta, Ilona Szabo (Raquel Duffy), meet for a working vacation at an Italian castle.
But Ilona’s former flame, actor Almady (C. David Johnson), makes an unexpected appearance and tries to woo Ilona, sending the sensitive Albert off the edge and Turai’s operetta hopes into turmoil.
The swaggering Turai never loses his cool, since he believes if he can write people he can control them in real life, too.
So he devises a plan to play into their stock characters: the seductive diva, the pompous villain and the romantic fool. Thanks to Johnson, who keeps an overplayed joke about complicated French names constantly fresh, and Gregory Prest, in a small but mighty role as a panicky secretary, there are some real, hearty laughs.
Matamoros’s Turai is too cool, too sharp, too condescending, so you’re just itching for a hiccup in his miraculous plan to save his colleagues’ happiness. That never seems to come, but even that comments on the meta narrative of the play: of course a playwright would write that the fictional version of himself saves the day.
Not having seen the first two incarnations of The Play’s the Thing, it’s clear from this one that Soulpepper is very comfortable with poking fun at the conventions of theatre onstage and off.
But in 2015, it’s hard to think why such a self-aware play wouldn’t comment on the all-white cast or the one stereotypical female role (who wants to be a “good little wife”) in a cast of seven.
If this is a reflection of1920s theatre looking back at itself, it’s not a particularly flattering portrait.
Afew threads still hit home, such as Marton’s opening image of the three men congratulating themselves on their work, sitting comfortably in a gold and white room with glass chandeliers, designed by Julie Fox.
It is the ideal of privilege.