"Let Me Hear You Smile" - Part Two

From left: Willy Farmer (Wayne McRice) looks out bay window while Neil Heywood (Sal Russo) and Hannah Heywood (Sheilah Morrison) know truly scary is The Dark outside that window.  The actors are dressed as kids throughout the last act of “Let Me Hear You Smile”, a regressive play which flopped on Broadway in 1973 but was a crowd-pleasing success in Martinez. 
Set design by Diane McRice, costumes by C.C. Cardin, directed by Helen Means.  [photo by Jamie Jobb]

“Let Me Hear You Smile” Again:

“Dancin’ on this Earth for a short while”

by Jamie Jobb

second of two parts

“Oh very young, what will you leave us this time

You're only dancin' on this Earth for a short while … “

When Cat Stevens wrote those lines in 1974, little did we know his lyrics 40 years later could introduce so splendidly “Let Me Hear You Smile”, the 1973 play which reopened the Martinez Campbell Theater season last weekend amid published reports implying the theater was closed.

This is an odd-duck dramatic farce about time marching backward and people acting their age accordingly (we’re talking about the show, not inaccurate press reports).  We can thank Campbell’s media wizard Randall Nott for applying Cat Stevens’ clip so well to the soundscape for this strange story which strains to move forward while fighting back the Wheel of Chronos.  

Playwrights Leonora Thuna and Harry Cauley never heard their audience smile when their work opened on Broadway, so they knew they had a flop.  After opening night, The Biltmore Theater shut down the show and the pair never wrote again. Their play was not the problem.

That one-night-flop dropped at the feet of famous young actor Sandy Dennis, miscast as Hannah Heywood.  Dennis was only 33 at the time.  That lead role required a mature actor who could age on stage regressively during the three acts from retirement to middle age to kindergarten.

Clive Barnes’ review in The New York Times said the young actor had "three chances and she missed every one of them.  All she was was sweet and smiling Sandy Dennis, fondling her mannerisms as if they were precious jade."  

More known for her movies, Dennis had won an Oscar seven years earlier for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” -- not a Tony for that play.  Was Sandy Dennis renowned for her comic chops? Holy Hades, no!

The hilarious Sheilah Morrison is Hannah Heywood in the current Onstage production. A stage veteran who has worked both coasts and the Midwest, Morrison has the true comic moxie necessary to inhabit such a verbally nimble, physically demanding stage role. Sandy Dennis at 33 must have had no clue what to do with Hannah, whom Sheilah serves here with relish. And salsa!

Morrison is a veteran player in her prime who thinks on her feet so she may intuitively commingle other actors, particularly the two men sharing stage with her in the Martinez production, Sal Russo and Wayne McRice. This is the trio’s first time working ensemble, let’s hope they get another chance on stage together soon.

Sheilah’s nimble stage skills became clear in a frozen moment of tech rehearsal last week when she and Russo had to quickly self-correct a glitch in their blocking for a pair of first act scenes.  Sal suddenly dropped character as husband Neil Heywood and said to Sheilah, who dropped her Hannah, “Wait … we’re off.”  

The actors realized they had jumped lines, perhaps ten pages forward in the script, to another point near the end of the first act, when the two had another similar moment on the very same spot on stage.

Many actors recall their lines based on footwork, precisely where they are on stage in any given moment.  When Russo stopped, both actors glanced down at their feet and immediately realized what they’d done.  Morrison said “we’ve blocked both scenes the same way!”

Like trained ballet dancers, the actors retraced their steps back to the point of beginning.  There they quickly reblocked the first scene so their footwork wouldn’t stumble their lines over similar steps in the second scene.  That self-correcting maneuver took less than five minutes of rehearsal and was something to behold, although no audience would ever know it.

Wayne McRice, who plays Hannah’s little brother Willy Farmer, is an absolute crack-up here as an eternally-lit-wisecracker with “a party going on in his head.”  McRice has the good sense to keep the slapstick within his lines.  

His character, youngest among the three, is a postal worker who retired first among them only to bury himself in National Geographic trivia which he spouts at random, much to the consternation of his never-wanna-quit hero and older brother-in-law Neil Heywood (Russo) whose family home is the setting for their “intercoursing” story. That term sprouts to life in the last act when Eros slumbers into these old kids’ imagination.

Russo and McRice previously appeared together in the Onstage hit “Motor Trade”. Here director Helen Means has wisely cast them for their opposing so-called somatotypes: endomorph Russo a hale, husky man who could have been coach’s choice for pulling guard on a football team.  McRice, an ectomorph, looks more like a baseball player, all sprung tight and ready to recoil as a shorter Hunter Pence. (Come-on Giants!)

In their few scenes together Russo and McRice are terrific and we hope other directors will cast them as opposed forces again in an offering up to Ares.  

C.C. Cardin’s costumes greatly enhance the regressive timeline and back-flippant humor of this work, so when the characters become kids in the final act, they look like children from photographs at the-turn-of-the-20th-Century: all knickers, suspenders, pigtails, summer prints, Navy Blue suit with white tie. Cardin’s costumes fit the physical demands of these tough closing scenes with obviously retired adults dressed as kids from 1904, allowing everyone to act accordingly.  

 

Diane McRice’s deep-set stagecraft also plays a key role, particularly for its open understated utilitarian layout.  It’s a wide drawing room with sparse furnishings that change as the acts change and, stage right, a stained-glass framed bay window known for its “flashing”! (See the play to get that pun about aptly named “Willy”.) But what makes her setting work for the pseudo-farcical action is the wide columned archway in the center of the room which leads to three exits: upstairs, the kitchen, or the front door.

As each character wants out of that front door at some point during the play, McRice’s design and Nott’s lighting eliminate the need for actually showing any doors at all, which allows “the dark” or the distance outside to creep into the room for deep effect in the final act.  Diane has crafted a nifty retooling of the traditional three-or-more-door sets that true farce demands.  Solid stage doors are difficult to build to withstand the constant battering of that kind of play, which this isn’t.  McRice was again aided by Claudia Gallup and Russo in construction.

When Means began developing this text with her actors, she was uncertain whether it would resonate with Baby Boomers old enough now to vaguely remember the 20th Century. Furthermore, she points out “when we started working on it we didn’t know if we’d be able to perform it anywhere.”  (See sidebar: “Campbell Squatters?”).  After two performances last weekend, she’s now convinced the play does resonate today; she heard her audience smile!   

Opening night’s Campbell crowd was lively, although it tended toward retirees and others who can relate directly to the play’s odd timing.  However, the handful of younger folks there seemed to enjoy the night as well, particularly the punchlines.  

In the lobby after the show, each actor admitted being quite surprised at the sustained laughter which built in the house throughout the evening.  They know that’s something quite rare for opening nights where glitches can sprout hitches, and Pan runs flat out of Puck.

Any weakness in this Campbell production lies not in performance but in the text, which might have been miraculous had it come from the pen of Herb Gardner (“A Thousand Clowns”) instead of two courageous playwrights who never got another opportunity to stage a flop -- or a success.

***

NOTE: Last week’s review of “Let Me Hear You Smile” detailed the play’s forth-and-backtracking storyline but those opinions were formed in research and rehearsal.  That review was rushed into print, as the play had yet to open; it will run seven more shows over the next two weeks.  This further review is based on the company’s first costumed rendition of the work before an audience last Saturday.  

“Let Me Hear You Smile” is NOW CLOSED

* * *

Campbell Squatters?

Onstage back on stage

Anchor tenant Onstage Repertory may be “squatting” at the Martinez Campbell Theater for its current production, “Let Me Hear You Smile” which runs through Sunday September 6.  

A renegotiated sublease with City of Martinez had yet to be completed when scenery went up and tech rehearsals began late in July.  The lease for the building had termed out in June after a year of stalled negotiations.  Amended extensions of the original 2005 lease and sublease were adopted at last week’s City Council meeting.

But the day after Council met, a legal issue surfaced regarding viable corporate status of the building owners regarding a corporate name change which jeopardizes their ability to enter into valid California contracts.  City officials anticipate correcting the contract problem at future Council sessions.  Meanwhile the show goes on at the Campbell.  

With a three-year sublease due to start in September, Campbell manager Mark Hinds expects many companies other than Onstage to vie for spots on the theater’s tight calendar.  During the last year of the lease, the theater was occupied 280 nights, with a total of 125 performances before live audiences.  

Other groups that have used the Campbell include Bay Area Stage Productions, Pittsburg Community Theater, Dragon Viper Cobra improv, Women of Words Productions, Hearts for Drama student group, illusionist Timothy James family magic shows, Bill Chessman’s Live Radio productions, as well as one-time performances by Will and Debi Durst’s traveling Year-End Stand-Up comedy team, Hometown Hero Joe DiMaggio’s 100th birthday celebration in November plus two spectacular solo shows by talented female vocalists Jené Bombardier of Martinez and You Tube sensation Amy Walker who launched her international stage tour at the Campbell in January.

Cultural cross-fertilization with wide-ranging community involvement is something the now defunct Willows Theater Company publicly promised but never could deliver in Martinez. After that popular troupe succumbed to harsh economics, the City accepted a proposal from Onstage which became “houseless” when its Pleasant Hill theater was condemned in 2008.

Unlike the Willows, Onstage has been willing to share the Campbell with other performers and companies, although sometimes that has meant schedule conflicts. After the lease snafu gets corrected and word spreads that the intimate 99-seat theater is no longer dark, Hinds expects to be hearing from groups who’ve used the space in the past, as well as new performers needing a stage.  Or as Hinds, ever the showman, likes to put it “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

[published in The Martinez Tribune - 28 August 2015]