Theatre--Review (Eunice Players' Theatre)

A night of laughter is always a good thing. Recently I was playing bridge with my regular Friday night group, and these ladies always have these hysterical stories that bring us to the point of tears and side-splitting pain. Eunice Players Theatre is no stranger to nights of laughter, usually beginning every season with a rousing comedy. (Think Barefoot in the Park in 2011 and What the Bellhop Saw in 2010.) Their 43rd season
began in that rich tradition with a truly funny The Murder Room, a Jack Sharkey comedy expertly directed by Jody L. Powell.

Authors like Jack Sharkey and Ray Cook generally drive some theatre people crazy, for their plots and characters are often interchangeable and indistinguishable. If I see another Ray Cook script, I may gag, but there’s something about The Murder Room, when expertly cast and directed, that’s rewarding. The intense word-play, the comedic timing, the physical interactions, all blended rather well in this production. Jody L. Powell, no stranger to farces, has assembled all the pieces skillfully, and though there were minor complications the night I saw the production, it was an overall wonderful evening, well-paced and surprisingly character-driven, something usually lost in farces.

Speaking of characters, the six actors on stage nicely created the cast who go through the most incomprehensible events. Glenn Mentel, Jr. is a likeable Edgar Hollister, though his British accent wanders in and out. (I’m still trying to process that this is the same actor who played a terrorist in What the Bellhop Saw.) A new face on Eunice’s stage, Catharine Arceneaux plays Susan Hollister as the loveable but dim daughter, who isn’t all she seems, capable of playing with guns and just not comprehending what is going on around her. As the gold-digging American wife Mavis, Mattie Guidry looks spectacular with an array of outfits worthy of supermodels. Deborah D. Ardoin brings a veteran’s touch to the role of the housekeeper Mrs. Lottie Malloy, enunciating the best and locking the accent more than anyone. Andy Doucet hits the
funny lines and delivers a good Texan accent, but the dumb, good ole Texan gets a little old by Act II.

And then there’s the special category for Shane Guilbeau, playing Inspector Crandall for at least the third time. I saw him do this play at Cité des Arts some time back, and I’ve known Shane for … a number of years. I recently enjoyed Angela Lansbury, on stage in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man in New York City, who earned a solid laugh with a mere look; Shane is a master of such looks. No one can match his ability to
stand stock still and act with only his face and those wonderfully shifting eyes. He times his pauses masterfully and can even make people laugh with the way he answers a phone. If we could only get him to not break character, which really happened only once during the production, and nail his accent—at present, it’s from some indescribable European country—he would be unstoppable. But I laughed when he broke, for it was funny.

Farces require utter perfection in the pacing of words and the timing of actions, and there were a few issues with line delivery. At times, it went fluidly, but sometimes actors stumbled awkwardly with those finely-tuned lines. There were also technical difficulties with tie clips, lighting knobs, and foot-placement (Shane, watch where your foot is supposed to go!). There was one instance where Shane jumped ahead in the script, normally disastrous for a farce, but his attempts to fix it provoked even more laughter. And Catharine did break character in Act II, recognizing the audience’s laughter with a quick but visible smile. The set worked wonderfully for the small stage that Eunice has, but that hand-drawn charcoal portrait of Mavis was distracting and stood out badly.

Did I mention that this was a night of laughter? And in the end, that’s all that counted. The audience loved the pace, especially the confusing twists of words where the characters themselves became confused over what the original question was. Eunice Players will perform this play Sunday, April 22, 2012, and again two more performances Wednesday, April 25 and Thursday, April 26. Visit the Eunice Players on Facebook or the Eunice Blogspot http://www.euniceplayers.blogspot.com/. Of all the local theatres, Eunice has mastered the farce.
---Vincent P. Barras