The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
Working the room at a New Year’s party for London’s upper crust, British dramatist Frederick Lonsdale spotted a gentleman he despised walking in. The host, fearing that the occasion might be ruined if the playwright were tempted to start tossing the verbal darts that were his specialty, encouraged him to appease the object of his contempt. Lonsdale walked over to the man. “I wish you a happy New Year,” he announced graciously. “But only one.”
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It’s easy to see the appeal of Lonsdale’s comedy. Accompanying his sometimes loopy wit (“To accuse a beautiful woman of being liked by one is suggestive that her underclothes are made of linoleum”) is a plot deliciously ridden with twists. Lady Cheyney, a widow newly arrived from Australia and desperate to enhance her social profile, invites a neurasthenic clump of muckety-mucks to her country home for an afternoon of music. (Out of earshot of his hostess, the personality-free Willie Wynton moans, “The first part of the concert is over. And if the second part isn’t better than the first, the garden will be strewn with bodies.”) As the aristocratic detritus drape themselves over Mrs. Cheyney’s furniture, hell-bent on exercising their God-given right to do nothing, it becomes clear that Cheyney has two potential suitors: aging, wealthy bore Lord Elton and young, waggish libertine Lord Dilling. Everyone else at the party merely coos over Mrs. Ebley’s spectacular pearls.
It seems certain this Mrs. Cheyney is headed for disaster. But a miraculous recovery takes shape in the second act of three. The same knot of blue bloods assembles in Mrs. Ebley’s slightly different room (where Choma has graciously supplied a few chairs)–but somehow the intermission’s ten minutes have given most of the characters dimension. From Nigel Patterson’s vapid Wynton to Elise Kauzlaric’s chirpy Joan to Jan Sodaro’s anxiety-ridden Mrs. Ebley, the stage is suddenly full of easily distinguished, detailed characters caught up in the giddy fun of watching the antiromantic Dilling pitch the aloof Mrs. Cheyney. Only Robert Kaercher as Dilling and Sara Walsh as Cheyney seem stuck in act-one indeterminacy, approaching nearly every moment with an unmodulated flippancy that does much to undermine the play’s stakes. It doesn’t help that costume designer Brooke M. Schaffner puts Walsh in a full-length gown the same shade of plum as the walls, rendering her nearly invisible. Even when Dilling discovers Cheyney’s true identity and offers an amorous deal meant to keep her out of prison–a scene with real undercurrents of violence–Kaercher and Walsh proceed with the same flirtatious lightness.
Still, Capurro packs enough smart, scandalous comedy into the show to prove he’s a writer worth watching. He’s even better as an actor: playing John, he turns a poker face into pure impish seduction. As Danny, John Cardone seems comparatively green, and at times he’s embarrassingly self-conscious sporting a diaper. But he captures his character’s naivete. Overall the show is a step above similar fare–which will mean little to those lacking a taste for queer innuendo and flaccid penises.
