Playhouse Delightfully parodies ‘Show Business’

 

What could possibly be more self-referential than yet another play about theater? What could be a better source for laughs?

William Shakespeare knew its worth when he spoofed actors and theater conventions with the rustics performing the play-within-a-play "The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby" in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

So did Mel Brooks when he mined the giddy tango of love and desperation involved in putting on a Broadway musical with "The Producers."

But Jane Martin's "Anton in Show Business," which opened Friday night at the Pittsburgh Playhouse of Point Park College, isn't played just for laughs.

Yes, it's wickedly funny and filled with enough sly jokes, absurd situations and witty twists and reversals of fortune to keep you amused and entertained all evening.

Ostensibly, "Anton in Show Business" follows a regional theater company in San Antonio, Texas, as it mounts a production of Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters" from the auditions in New York City to the final catastrophe. Cast as the three sisters are a television actress hoping to polish her image as a serious actress so she can get film work, a middle-aged New York actress with a resume of 200 unpaid acting roles and a day job that pays the bills and a naive ingenue with her first professional role.

Occasional theatergoers as well as frequent attendees and theater practitioners should easily find the humor inherent in the multicultural director who "doesn't do the script thing," the starlet who wants to sacrifice period costume accuracy to show off her legs or the cynical symbiotic relationship between corporate funders and artists. Demeteria Mellott's turn as an artistic director explaining the "Seven Virtues" of her theater's mission statement alone justifies the evening.

But it's also a sharp satire on the state of American theater at the beginning of the 21st century that leaves no participant — artist, funder, audience member or critic — unscathed.

Susan McGregor-Laine and Shirley Tannenbaum enliven the evening with disarmingly dead-on performances in trouser roles as a wily tobacco company executive trying to buy respectability by funding art and an eastern European director renowned for his direction of Chekhov.

Director Sheila McKenna keeps the pacing, tension and laughs lively throughout. But the theater-in-the-round staging often finds one actor blocking the audiences' view of another at crucial moments. The theater's usual seating has been replaced with a variety of chairs, some more comfortable than others. At times, audience members might find themselves sitting next to the play's participants, which can be intriguing or disarming depending on how close you prefer to get to the action.

The evening gets off to a rocky start with Tracey D. Turner's stage manager character doing an "Our Town" introduction that's vaguely conceived and oddly accented. She's much more her usual dynamic self as the show's seen-it-all stage manager and a politically savvy, flamboyant director.

Also a woman portraying a man, Elena Passarello lends a soulful note as the play's most sincere character, Ben, a married country-western singer who falls for the starlet.

The play's flaw is that it raises issues without providing solutions. An unsuccessful attempt to wrap things up by mirroring the characters' situations with the circumstances of those they play in "Three Sisters" makes the conclusion feel forced and unsatisfying.

One question Martin raises does have a clear answer — "Is theater culturally important enough to be the subject of a play?" The answer is yes when the play both makes you laugh out loud and ponder some of the issues this one raises.

by Alice T. Carter

Tuesday, February 11, 2003