My daily diet of weighty headlines lately has left me craving lighter fare — the sort dressed with lavish satin gowns, served up in luxuriously appointed Newport boudoirs and peppered with ridiculous setups and quippy jests about theater people.
As such, I was amply sated by The Angel Next Door, Village Repertory Company’s effervescent new offering in collaboration with Threshold Repertory Theater at the latter’s spot on 84 Society St. The East Coast premiere, directed by Keely Enright, is now playing there through March 30.
Playwright Paul Slade Smith’s 2023 work was adapted from Ferenc Molnar’s 1924 Hungarian work, The Play at the Castle. Naturally, that title alone prompts recollections of another famed play at a castle, dreamed up by an agonized young Prince Hamlet to catch the conscience of a king. Here the stakes are perhaps considerably less grave. The play is concocted by a 1940s scribe Charlotte Sanders (Liz Butler), and her aim is more mercenary in nature.
She and her co-writer husband Arthur (Don Brandenburg) are literally banking on the stuff of a romantic novel as their next Broadway hit. It is one based on the debut work of a lovelorn new novelist Oliver Adams (Anthony Matrejek), an autobiographical recounting of the affairs of his heart. But when the object of his desire and the subject of his book, a leading lady by the name of Margot Ball (Lara Swallen), is overheard by the Sanders duo in a lusty peccadillo next door, it looks to upend their entire, Broadway-bound gravy train.
On a swish set by Enright, with drop-dead fabulous getups and décor by Julie Ziff, we are soon awash in a world where Broadway hits are halcyon days and triumphs are toasted with premium bubbly. The charge here is to unleash as much screwball comedy out of the situation as possible, with Butler and Brandenburg convivially, expertly setting the tony tone while navigating the hurdles set in motion by the neophyte novelist.
From the get-go, the play hints at a future in farce: There are four Parisian green doors on stage and two open windows, and I was primed for antic entrances from various doors. That didn’t quite happen, but there was fun to be had at quite a few of those thresholds.
The fun was at full tilt with the repeated appearances of Olga, a maid of sort-of Slavic origin who could neither be charmed nor charm, performed to great comic effect by Tara Denton Holwegner, rolling her Champagne cart like a howitzer, while forever bemoaning the likes of “theater people.” As Victor Pratt, the dim-witted Lothario who has compromised the play’s prospects with his overtures to Margo, Paul O’Brien brought on madcap physical humor, with flapping arms and plenty of chortle-worthy proof of his character’s intellectual limits.
As the sweethearts whose fate hinges on the success of Charlotte’s rapidly crafted dram, which aims to explain away the shenanigans next door, the pair portrayed by Matrejek and Swallen are suitably, endearingly wet behind the ears, more ingenue and suitor than fodder for funny, though Swallen does get some choice uproarious action in the throes of the play within the play.
All in all, it was a sheer pleasure to be propelled forward for a couple of hours by something with sufficient plot twists and parody to at least temporarily take leave of the daily onslaught, to have a hearty laugh or two at the cost of theater people, which never ceases to entertain those like myself who are smitten by the stage. These days, it may not always solve our existential crises in the way it has in days before. But that’s a topic for a different play and for another day.
WANT TO GO? Tickets are $35 to $50. Shows through March 30. Performances are at Threshold Repertory Theatre, 84 Society St., Charleston. More: Village Reperatory Company.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
