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The longest-running professional theater in America kicks off its 80th anniversary with a genial comedy about Hollywood in the '30s.
"Moonlight and Magnolias." By Ron Hutchinson. Staged by The Cape Playhouse.
by Bill Marx
Dennis, Mass. - June 23, 2006 -
Over the last 80 years, most of America's summer theaters have changed or faded away. But the Cape Playhouse hangs onto the old formula -- a hot weather season of musicals and light comedies, usually hits on Broadway. The shows are cast with recognizable names from stage and screen. In the age of the iPod, the approach is self-consciously nostalgic. Sometimes the stars are in the winter of their careers and the shows reach with frantic determination back to simpler times.
Located in Dennis, Mass., the Cape Playhouse Theater itself is a comforting antique -- a 19th-century wooden-beamed church converted into a stage during the 20s. The audience sits on the original pews, comforted by cushions. It is a pleasant -- and rapidly vanishing -- experience of theater as sunny comfort food, a mint julep for the soul.
The opening production of the Cape Playhouse's 80th season pretty well fits into the traditional summer mold, though Ron Hutchinson's genially amusing but thin comedy, "Moonlight and Magnolias," was produced off-Broadway. Also, the show's stars are in vigorous middle age.
The plot is based on Hollywood fact. After filming had begun on "Gone with the Wind," producer David O. Selznick fired the director, his friend George Cukor. He called in screenwriter Ben Hecht and director Victor Fleming to come up with a script in five days. Locked in Selznick's office, fed only bananas and peanuts, Fleming and Selznick act out the novel, which Hecht says he hasn't bothered to read. "No film about the Civil War ever made money," Hecht repeatedly insists. Hasn't he heard of "Birth of a Nation"?
How do you make three guys yakking for two acts about "Gone with the Wind" funny? The fleet-tongued moviemakers spend a lot of time bickering about each other's backgrounds, gossiping about stars such as Clark Gable, arguing about the importance of the producer, the director and the writer, and philosophizing about why they make movies.
Hutchinson tries to introduce some serious issues. The left-wing Hecht points out that Selznick is a Jew making a film that celebrates the Old South, including slavery. But more often than not the evening is content to bang out insults and one-liners. As exhaustion sets in and paper and banana peels cover the floor, the guys start slapping each other around. By that point "Moonlight and Magnolias" has run out of satiric steam.
There's no point to the comic business but a clash of egos. All plays about Hollywood end up safely glamorizing, as well as critiquing, the business of selling out. "Moonlight and Magnolias" may run out of comic business, but the performers are deliciously scrappy. Brad Oscar as the overbearing Selznick, Dan Butler as the cynical Hecht, and Mark Zimmerman as Fleming are a giggly team, especially when Oscar's Selznick plays a sex-kittenish Scarlet O'Hara. Add a snappy art deco set and you have old-fashioned summer theater -- as relaxing, and fleeting, as a breeze on a sultry day.
"Moonlight and Magnolias" runs through July 1, 2006 at The Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Mass. For tickets, call 877-385-3911.
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