BY ADAM MICHAEL SCHENCK
Not all theater should be taut and dramatic expositions on human mistakes, even if it seems we do little else. Of course the symbol of the theater is two masks, one comedy and the other tragedy.
Since taking the helm of the Guthrie as artistic director in 2015, Joseph Haj has specialized in topical dramas, the likes of which this critic has praised. But just as the best director builds conflict only to release it with humor, a theatrical season must splice in the dark and the light.
“The Royal Family” falls in the latter category. In this broad comedy by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, directed by Rachel Chavkin, the ensemble cast delights in portraying the legendary acting clan of the Barrymores (here renamed the Cavendishes), whose history on stage and screen runs from the late 1800s to contemporary actress Drew Barrymore.
If you love the lore of show business and can quote stage, film and television lines in everyday conversation, do not miss this Family. If you find people who do that interminable bores, then you may not appreciate The Royal Family’s charms.
Clocking in at roughly three total hours with two intermissions (one short and one long enough to order a refreshment), this production asks more of its audience than the typical comedy. However, I found the play to offer insights worthy of this commitment, perhaps because my interlocutor and I caught a matinee performance.
The length is apropos for the content: The play is set in the early 1920s, a few short years before films move from silent to “talkies,” and when plays had as many as five acts, not the standard two to which we have grown accustomed.
Production values often impress me at the Guthrie, and Family is no exception. A beautiful, detailed set (design by Marte Johanne Ekhougen) offers the space for the actors to chew up the scenery. A wall of lights displays The Royal Family as if to remind us that before Netflix suggestions popped up on our screens as if by magic, marketing on Broadway meant giant flashing lights (lighting design by Bradley King).
And who wouldn’t want his or her name in lights? A life on the stage has its ebb and flow, three generations of Cavendish women discover. Fanny (Elizabeth Franz) presides over her brood like a dowager queen, yet is keen to perform again as a septuagenarian.
Her daughter Julie (Michelle O’Neill) commands Broadway at the apex of her career. Nevertheless her chaotic family life has her hemorrhaging money and focus. Her brother Tony (Matthew Saldivar), who has left Broadway for Hollywood film fame, is on the run from the law, paparazzi and paramours. Julie’s daughter Gwen (Victoria Janicki), an ingénue, must decide whether to pursue the family business or settle down as a wife.
The ensemble is rounded out by secondary characters that provide substance and dependability during the Cavendishes’ ups and downs. Oscar Wolfe (Shawn Hamilton) finds the family jobs as their agent while domestic servants Jo and Delia (Charles Hubbell and Mo Perry, respectively) run the family’s swank New York apartment.
Gilbert Marshall and Perry Stewart (Robert O. Berdahl, David Darrow) represent normalcy as businessmen-cum-love interests. Kitty and Herbert Dean (Angela Timberman, Bill McCallum) add comic relief. (Ironically Drew Barrymore carries both family names; the fictional Deans represent the real-life Drews, the other limb on the family tree.)
One misstep in the production is the choice of newcomer costume designer Brenda Abbandadolo to drop (in the final act) the period dress that situates the action in the Roaring Twenties. My interlocutor pointed out that this gesture makes the story’s themes—work/life balance, duty to one’s family, the excitement of a life on the stage versus the predictability of bourgeois life—timeless.
I found the change in costume jarring. At one point a character discusses intercontinental travel by cruise ship (an 18-and-a-half-day journey) in a modern evening dress.
In a production this long and verbose, one expects some disjunction. While the first and second acts introduce the hi-jinks and dilemmas of the characters, the final act does not fully resolve the multiple plots and subplots.
In so doing, the play imitates life, of course, because, as Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” The Cavendishes/Barrymores find their just deserts in due course, as we all do, but if we do our work as best we can and honestly, then by golly, things will turn out all right.
“The Royal Family” plays on the McGuire Stage at the Guthrie Theater through March 19. Find more information at GuthrieTheater.org.
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