This weekend I was beyond pleasantly surprised by what College Night at the CenterStage Theatre had to offer. The production, George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance, was paired with one of the best deals I have ever seen in Baltimore: dinner (catered by Indian restaurant Akbar), theatre and a free beer (for those of age) after the show at Brewer's Art for a grand total of $15! What more can a culture-savvy Hopkins student ask for?
Misalliance is the furthest cry from predictable that one can imagine. Director Irene Lewis' production, which started running October 3 and continues through November 2, is hilarious and sobering in an instant, providing nuggets of wisdom on family relationships, the English class system, love and, as the play's title suggests, marriage.
Shaw's 1909 text brings to life a "proper" English family's drama, with unexpected crises and escapades on the side. Headstrong underwear magnate, John Tarleton (Peter Van Norden) - "The Great," as he calls himself - incessantly and loftily ponders society, erudition and his own destiny, while daughter Hypatia (Stacy Ross), looks on with frustrated disgust. Having agreed to marry the effeminate aristocrat Bentley Summerhays (Andrew Weems) although she doesn't love him, she becomes increasingly aggravated with the constraints of her situation, and craves adventure.
Bentley Summerhays, a small and "overbred" man, as Hypatia's mother calls him ("like one of those expensive dogs"), has a unique talent for infuriating whomever he talks to by bawling like a baby whenever he feels insulted - which is quite often. So it is little wonder that characters like head-strong and opinionated Johnny Tarleton (Trent Dawson), Hypatia's brother, are driven to near-insanity and violence by Bentley's child-like antics. Luckily Bentley's father, Lord Summerhays (George Morfogen), is thereto eloquently insert his slow, deliberate and wise opinion to calm high tempers.
Hypatia opens the play's debate by challenging social restrictions and wishing "home, parents, family [and] duty to be blown to bits," while her equally stubborn and prolifically well-read father ceaselessly recommends that the other characters read Darwin, Browning, Kipling, Lombroso... and the list goes on. "Still, you know, the superman may come," he says at one point. "The superman's an idea; I believe in ideas. Read what's-his-name." To which the audience inevitably explodes with laughter at Shaw's poking fun.
By the end of Act I the Tarletons have hashed and rehashed family relationships with such precision that you might feel a part of the quirky family yourself, only that Shaw cranks out an unexpected surprise before intermission: an airplane crashes into the ceiling of the beautiful, airy Tarleton estate in an effect that should make set designer Tony Straiges proud. It is revolutionary - not only has the crash never been performed on stage before, but never before has a smoking airplane crashed into a house and not broken a single window pane!
Out of the wreckage emerge the handsome Joey Percival (Eric Sheffer Stevens) and celebrated acrobat Lina Szczepanowska (Natalija Nogulich), an unlikely pair indeed. Of course Hypatia is ecstatic at this adventure dropping in out of the sky, while her mother is horrified at the scantily-clad acrobat who clearly arouses the interest of every man in the room, including her husband.
It is also in the second act that the audience's curiosity is finally satiated with regards to a mysterious gunman. Throughout the first act he is seen roaming the estate and popping into the room at inopportune moments or in the middle of fist-raising arguments, only to find that he is pointing his gun at some wrong character. As it turns out, this nervous, tragic clerk (Carson Elrod) is there to revenge his mother's death - his mother, we discover, was once the elder John Tarleton's mistress, though comically unbeknownst to him.
In an effort to hide, the clerk gets stuck inside a Turkish bath while Hypatia and the dashing Joey Percival have a conversation inappropriate to both of their levels of society, and shocking for an audience of Shaw's time. As this third-party observer, the mysterious gunman - who is unexpectedly rather well-read himself, and a bit of a socialist - emerges and reveals the madness of the Tarleton family to the Tarleton family themselves.
In a thick low-class accent he cries, "If you only knew what went on in this house!" and that he has to get out of "this polluted atmosphere." In exposing Hypatia's impropriety with Joey Percival he fanatically exclaims, "If she likes him then why shouldn't she tell him?!" The tirade is beautifully lucid and shocks the Tarleton family while amusing the audience all the while.
Another truth-teller is Lina Szczepanowska, who observes that the Tarleton estate is, metaphorically, "a stuffy house." She tells them that all they ever talk about is love, which rings true not only for the Tarleton family but for any audience as well.
Shaw's comedy never fails to surprise and provides a timeless commentary on issues pertinent to all of us youngsters - one recurrent theme is the gulf between parents and their children; which Lord Summerhays and John Tarleton never fail to point out to each other at each shocking misunderstanding:
So, children, go get some culture and pay your $15 for this incredible deal - and bring a date, it will surely give you something to talk about. Though there are no more College Nights for this show, there will be three others during the theatre season for other productions.
