Dalliance under glass...
Equity Showcase (closed)
by Kevin Brofsky . . December 15, 2000
Did you ever attend a holiday or celebration with your friend’s family and watch your friend go insane at being there while you sit back and watch with amusement? That is exactly the feeling I had watching George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance at The Pulse. Shaw’s comedy concerning the going-ons of the Tarleton family of 1909 England is enough to make the audience dizzy, as if brandy was accidently poured into the afternoon tea.
For those who aren’t familiar with the play, John Tarleton (Michael Gilpin), a voracious reader (including of Shaw himself) and undergarment manufacturer of Edwardian England, is troubled by his over-zealous daughter Hypatia (Natalie Wilder) who is not willing to marry the older and aristocratic Lord Summerhays (Steve Abbruscato) over the Lord’s high-strung wreck of a son Bentley (Byron Grossbauer) who can “make one break china or commit murder.” Out of the sky - literally, by airplane crash into the greenhouse (an astounding sound effect) - comes an aviator (Steven Whittle) and his passenger in male drag (women don’t fly in 1909) Lina Szczepanowska (JulieHara DeStefano) (a very funny moment occurs as she tries to teach this English family how to pronounce her name). Add to this a late-plot gunman (Matthew Trumbull) who is after Tarleton for betraying his dead mother and you have what will be referred to as a dysfunctional family in eighty years to come.
Director Ann Bowen has tackled two difficult jobs here: she has taken a talky Shaw play (they mention it quite a few times how everyone talks nonstop) and moves it at a fast, but manageable pace and she was able to use the claustrophobic Pulse space to create the illusion of an English garden. Also credit Roger Mooney’s set for this.
She has also cast well for the most part. Stephen Aloi is perfect in the thankless role of Tarleton's son John. Michael Gilpin takes a pompous character and makes him likable and a lightweight. Maureen Hayes as his long suffering wife is instantly likable and isn’t on the stage often enough. But it is Matthew Trumbull who steals the 2nd act of the evening with his hyper sensitive, manic gunman. Trumbull can give Frasier’s David Hyde Pierce a good run for his money. A slight miscasting with Natalie Wilder as the daughter who is more annoying than anything else (and with two suitors, one has to be “anything else.”) A good actress, Wilder can handle her long speeches well, but is too earthbound for Hypatia. And how anyone can mistake the beautiful JulieHara DeStefano for a man, even in goggles and trousers, is beyond me. DeStefano makes an odd role - way out of Shaw’s usual family - work to her advantage.
In Misalliance, the women are stronger than the men and the casting in this production reflects that. Aside from Gilpin and the manic outcast Trumbull, one waits for the ladies to return. Shaw’s women, for their time, were ahead of it and he loved to watch his fellow countrymen “get it” from their women. The scene in which Hypatia confronts her father will be reflected a few years later in Shaw’s masterpiece Pygmaleon. One note to directors and prop persons of period works: A little thing like a pen or the clips on suspenders can take the audience out of the play.
The designers have splashed the small Pulse stage with color. Terry Leong’s costumes are always on the mark and Louis Lopardi’s light and sound design are a pleasure to the eye and ear, even as one works to decipher Shaw’s plot.
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