The Man Who Came To Dinner

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The Man Who Came To Dinner
A Production of the Shoestring Theatre
2005-12-14
Article Written by: Charles Griffin

The man in The Man Who Came To Dinner is named Sheridan Whiteside, but in the tag end of the Great Depression, everyone knew that the character was a thinly disguised Alexander Woolcott, famous writer, critic and radio personality. He was a man who had many famous friends, who knew everybody who was anybody and who was known to be both witty and insufferable simultaneously.

According to the director of this Shoestring Theatre production of, Mike LaCroix, the playwrights and collaborators, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufmann, were discussing a dinner that Hart had had with Woolcott one night. He referred to it as the "worst evening of my life" and then he said to Kaufmann, "Imagine if he broke his leg and had to stay with me." Right away the partners recognized the potential of the idea and a great new play was born.

Dinner has probably been done a million times by students and in little theaters everywhere. A movie and a Broadway revival have also helped to keep it alive, despite the fact that many of the people to whom much of the wit refers are long gone. (Albert Einstein, the Marx brothers, Orson Welles, Noel Coward, Tallulah Bankhead, H.G. Wells.) Also long gone is the lifestyle and culture of a fictional small town in Ohio where a wealthy family might have a cook and butler, a doctor would make house calls, and telephone connections were made through an operator.

With two intermissions, this version of Dinner runs two and a half hours long, and in the course of the play, characters come and go with rapidity. Everything is always centered around the personality of Whiteside, who is called Sherry by his friends—that is, those who can trade insults with the master. Others suffer because they don't know how to deal with the acerbic invalid.

Clark Adams plays Whiteside and is onstage most of the time. This is a fast-paced farce, with many lines and lots of jokes, so it's easy to make a flub now and them. Clark pulls it off with impressive skill and visual cues, though, and his expressions carry much of the scenes, since he is generally bound to a wheelchair through most of the play.

He is outdone only by Jo'el (the stage name for an otherwise anonymous actor) who bristles with energy and bounds across the stage in two of the three parts he plays as Banjo (a Harpo Marx parody) and Beverly Carlton (either Noel Coward or Orson Welles, depending on your perception of the portrayal).

Also very startling, since this is set in the 1930s, is Bill Cashman, who plays Bert Jefferson, the town newspaperman who courts Whiteside's secretary, Maggie Cutler, played by Debi LaCroix. Cashman looks like Robert Young, a famous actor of that era, and plays the role with same dash that Young brought to his movies. Deja Vu? Reincarnation? Young's love child? It's food for thought.

LaCroix plays Maggie as a sharp counterpoint to Whiteside, taking no guff. Her romance with Jefferson provides one of the main subplots as Whiteside uses his pull to bring Rachel Yadanza in, as the actress Lorraine Sheldon, to seduce the newspaperman away from his secretary before she quits her job for marriage.

There's a long-suffering nurse, Ashley Prunyne as Miss Preen, who gets one of the best lines in the play, but I will not reveal it here. You'll just have to go see.

Among the 18 people onstage and in Whiteside's crosshairs at one time or another are Chris Patterson and Beeg Camarota as the hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, David Perlman and Alice Camarota as John the butler and Sarah the cook, Ashley Tucker and Jesse Amos as the younger Stanleys, Pete Hanstine as Dr. Bradley, Deborah Clark as Mrs. McCutcheon, Mike Osowski as various roles (hauling a lot of freight), Chloe Ariel Perez and Olivia Perez as choir girls and last, but not least, Justine "Red" Blanchette as the weird and possibly dangerous Harriet Stanley, sister of Mr. Stanley, and the provider of the play's pivotal moment.

Let's not forget about the production crew. Patterson, Yadanza and Alice Camarota also pitched in behind the scenes. Dee Foster produced. Holly Chatman did lighting and sound. Cliff Weikal was in on the set construction. Deborah Clark did hair and makeup. Tina Walloups, Tonie Charnesky and Foster were set dressers.

So, is it worth your while to go see? Yes! Even if you know nothing about the famous people of the 1930s, the gags still hit home. We all know a pompous ass and we know all too well the lives of the rich and famous from exposure to celebrity television shows. Every time someone is skewered onstage, in our minds we can think of a person in our time to whom the spike could be applied. Everyone in the audience laughed several times, some of us at different times. I found myself laughing alone once because I recognized myself in one of the characters. You might, too.

The Man Who Came To Dinner continues Dec. 15, 16 and 17 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 18 at 2:30 p.m. at the Shoestring Theatre, 380 S. Goodwin St. , Lake Helen . Call 386-228-3777 for more information or tickets.

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