Thornton Wilder and Center Stage are a perfect match
Any company that wants to produce The Matchmaker well, and according to Wilder's intentions, must take care to preserve two qualities in the play. The first is the universality of the play's appeal. Wilder wrote for a mass audience, and his plays explore the common experience of the human condition.
The satire that appears in The Matchmaker focuses on the clash between middle-class values and universal needs. Dolly, commenting on the value of money, derides thrift (and not incidentally advocates Keynesian economics) by likening it to manure; piled up, it stifles life, spread around, it helps new life grow. The second quality is harder to describe. It could be described as innocence, but a more accurate description is fresh-facedness.
The play takes place around the turn of the century, before the First World War, a time of unbridled confidence and, yes, innocence in America. A production which doesn't preserve this lighthearted optimism doesn't preserve the core of the play. Not incidentally, this is why The Merchant of Yonkers failed in its original Broadway run.
The CenterStage production, in complete contrast to this original run, maintains a high level of energy. It opens with a bang, literally, as Horace rages at Ambrose, Ermengard weeps and a frustrated barber tries to shave Horace's face while he rises from his chair and wildly gesticulates. However, Edward Gero is successful in bringing humanity to a character that is easy to overact.
In his asides, he gives Horace the vice of hypocrisy, and in his first conversation with Dolly shows him to be a simple, though pretentious, soul, easily captivated by Caitlin O'Connell's mesmerizing, duplicitous, well-meaning and vain as a peacock Dolly. O'Connell's first aside, in turn, indulges in some obvious foreshadowing, using a comment Horace tossed off about "the world falling to pieces" to introduce her pursuit of him as well as the chaos that characterizes the end of the play.
The duos of Cornelius and Barnaby (portrayed respectively by Michael Braun and Garrett Neergaard), and Irene Molloy and her assistant, Minnie Fay (Kate Turnbull and Keri Setaro), manage to play well off each other. As Dolly attempts to broker a marriage between Irene and Horace, each pair in their own scenes repeat word for word exchanges uttered by the other two, while remaining totally in character.
Laurence O'Dwyer is effective in his portrayal of Malachi Stack as a wise old gnome, whose advice to Horace goes unheeded and whose aside to the audience mocks sobriety as he makes it clear that one vice is the perfect amount.
There can be no quarrels with the preservation of the tone of the play. The blame for the lack of character development of Ambrose and especially Ermengarde (who never really develops from a girl with the "soul of a field mouse" described by Ambrose) can be laid only partially with the script.
Similarly, Lee Rosen and Zoë Winters must be faulted for not bringing more to their characters. The lighting was unimaginative and the singing a bit canned.
However, overall, Center Stage's interpretation of The Matchmaker is definitely worth seeing and is a production worthy of Wilder.
The satire that appears in The Matchmaker focuses on the clash between middle-class values and universal needs. Dolly, commenting on the value of money, derides thrift (and not incidentally advocates Keynesian economics) by likening it to manure; piled up, it stifles life, spread around, it helps new life grow. The second quality is harder to describe. It could be described as innocence, but a more accurate description is fresh-facedness.
The play takes place around the turn of the century, before the First World War, a time of unbridled confidence and, yes, innocence in America. A production which doesn't preserve this lighthearted optimism doesn't preserve the core of the play. Not incidentally, this is why The Merchant of Yonkers failed in its original Broadway run.
The CenterStage production, in complete contrast to this original run, maintains a high level of energy. It opens with a bang, literally, as Horace rages at Ambrose, Ermengard weeps and a frustrated barber tries to shave Horace's face while he rises from his chair and wildly gesticulates. However, Edward Gero is successful in bringing humanity to a character that is easy to overact.
In his asides, he gives Horace the vice of hypocrisy, and in his first conversation with Dolly shows him to be a simple, though pretentious, soul, easily captivated by Caitlin O'Connell's mesmerizing, duplicitous, well-meaning and vain as a peacock Dolly. O'Connell's first aside, in turn, indulges in some obvious foreshadowing, using a comment Horace tossed off about "the world falling to pieces" to introduce her pursuit of him as well as the chaos that characterizes the end of the play.
The duos of Cornelius and Barnaby (portrayed respectively by Michael Braun and Garrett Neergaard), and Irene Molloy and her assistant, Minnie Fay (Kate Turnbull and Keri Setaro), manage to play well off each other. As Dolly attempts to broker a marriage between Irene and Horace, each pair in their own scenes repeat word for word exchanges uttered by the other two, while remaining totally in character.
Laurence O'Dwyer is effective in his portrayal of Malachi Stack as a wise old gnome, whose advice to Horace goes unheeded and whose aside to the audience mocks sobriety as he makes it clear that one vice is the perfect amount.
There can be no quarrels with the preservation of the tone of the play. The blame for the lack of character development of Ambrose and especially Ermengarde (who never really develops from a girl with the "soul of a field mouse" described by Ambrose) can be laid only partially with the script.
Similarly, Lee Rosen and Zoë Winters must be faulted for not bringing more to their characters. The lighting was unimaginative and the singing a bit canned.
However, overall, Center Stage's interpretation of The Matchmaker is definitely worth seeing and is a production worthy of Wilder.
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