Theater Review
With the current taste in theater for verisimilitude, where audiences are obligated to take sides, mistake the plot for truth and make moral judgments, the comedy of manners has become extinct. Even revivals of Restoration comedy (Sheridan and Congreve) are far and few between, so Theatricum Botanicum’s revival of Anna Cora Mowatt’s “Fashion” is a bold move. The play is a keen good-natured satire on American nouveaux riches, and Mowatt was more than equipped to dissect the New York social scene, with all its pretense and gullibility, its tendency to ape Parisian customs, and its exaltation of money. Born in 1819, Mowatt came from a respectable New York family, and was the first American woman of society to help set the American theater on the path from social and moral contempt to respectability. Written in 1845, “Fashion” was her most popular play, and one of the first examples of a distinctly American comedy of manners. The play opens with Mrs. Tiffany (Barbara Tarbuck), the wife of a newly rich business man (Steve Matt) whose extravagance is ruining him. He, unbeknownst to her, has been caught in financial misconduct by his clerk Snobson (Jeff Bergquist), who will say nothing as long as he is promised Tiffany’s daughter Seraphina’s (Elizabeth Tobias) hand in marriage. Meanwhile Count Jolimaitre (Mark Lewis), an impostor with his own designs on Tiffany’s money, is wooing Seraphina. The source of “Fashion”‘s comedy is its satirizing of social pretensions, which starts right off with the hilarious repartee between Mrs. Tiffany and her French maid Millinette (Abby Craden), where butchering the French language (jenny-says quoi) is played to the hilt. Director Ellen Geer recalls that when she was 16 her father, actor Will Geer, was in an Off- Broadway production of “Fashion.” “It made an indelible impression on me and has stayed with me all these years,” she said. “Fashion” was first produced at the Park Theatre in New York in 1845 in a splendid production, which has been repeated at the Theatricum. The cast, which includes several Theatricum veterans, moves in and around the bucolic stage in Topanga. But the opulence is magnificently displayed in the costumes. Designer Kim DeShazo defines the arriviste’s uncertainty in matters of taste by overdressing Mrs. Tiffany in the most outlandishly inappropriate silks and satins. The colorful palette of men and women’s attire saturates the stage. While letting the script stand on its own funny two feet, Geer has also added tunes from the era, accompanied on piano by Evan Alparone, including “The Pig and the Inebriate,” and “I Wish I Were Single Again.” The delightful part about this show is that these characters, despite their vanities and banalities, do not offend our moral sense. We are amused. Performances continue through October 2 at various times, depending on the dates, at the Theatricum, 1419 Topanga Canyon Blvd. There will be a pre-show discussion on Saturday, July 16 at 7 p.m. For tickets, call 455-3723.
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