Strawdog Theatre Company’s second-floor venue in what once was a grimier stretch of North Broadway has never been ideal. Low ceilings and two big pillars in the middle of the playing area make sightlines a nightmare. But that’s never stopped the company’s ambitions — and for its last show in its longtime home, soon to be demolished in the name of gentrification, Strawdog has chosen the perfect valentine to both showbiz and the price of progress.
“Once in a Lifetime,” George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s 1930 jaundiced-but-jocular view of Hollywood as the talkies took over in the wake of Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer,” holds up pretty well (though it’s probably best appreciated by film buffs). However, the play — the first in Kaufman and Hart’s fruitful collaboration — is seldom revived, and a lot of that has to do with the humongous cast of characters, featuring nearly 40 speaking parts.
Damon Kiely’s sparkling and sardonic staging gets it all done with 12 actors, who zip around those troublesome columns on their way to lightning-fast quick changes. It helps that Kiely has surgically removed some of the now-obscure references to stars of the Jazz Age. It also helps that he’s cast the play impeccably with an all-star lineup of Strawdog regulars. Finally, by interpolating contemporary songs like Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” and Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” delivered with 1920s-novelty-song flair complete with ukuleles and kazoos, Kiely’s production makes the point that while the medium changes, the California Gold Rush for Hollywood fame and fortune remains the same.
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The central trio of fortune hunters in Kaufman and Hart’s play are washed-up vaudevillians seeking to reinvent themselves as elocution experts for silent-film stars terrified that America will hear what they really sound like. (The story got reworked a fair bit for “Singin’ in the Rain.”) May (Kat McDonnell) is the practical wisecracker. Jerry (Michael Dailey) is the big-picture, short-on-details guy who desires success and isn’t particular about where it comes from. And George (Scott Danielson) is the literal-minded, lovable lummox whose inability to control what he says and pay attention to what he’s doing somehow works out in the end. Hey, in a world where everyone pretends to be someone else, maybe an authentic idiot is onto something. Danielson’s performance stands out, and not just because his physical size dominates the small space.
Their misadventures in Tinsel Town — involving everyone from a Hedda Hopper-esque movie columnist, Helen Hobart (played to the affected hilt by Justine C. Turner), to a dyspeptic studio titan, Glogauer (Jamie Vann, a Borscht Belt version of Sydney Greenstreet) — capture the cynicism that Broadway babies like Kaufman and Hart felt for Hollywood’s growing populist dominance. A running joke involves a New York playwright, Lawrence Vail (Paul Fagen), who has been hired by Glogauer’s studio as a screenwriter and has literally done nothing — a sunnier precursor to the Coen brothers’ “Barton Fink.”
Update the show for today, and maybe May, Jerry and George would be YouTube sketch comics hoping to sell a series to Netflix. But this production pops with affection for the original period, reflected in Brittany Dee Bodley and Cassandra Bass’ glitzy flapper dresses and Joe Schermoly’s flexible set, which switches over from a cramped train compartment to Glogauer’s pink-and-silver Art Deco outer sanctum, where Nicole Bloomsmith’s receptionist, Miss Leighton, wields power like a Kelly Girl out of Kafka. Even with two intermissions to accommodate the scene changes, the show zips along.
Kiely’s cast excels at the quick-draw caricatures filling in the supporting roles and background characters, without ever letting them turn into smarmy cartoons. And he understands that the balancing act here is between McDonnell’s May — a bruised romantic hurt by Jerry’s inability to really make a play for her — and George, the perpetual wingman who takes people at their word, even when (this being Hollywood, again) they don’t remember what they promised five minutes earlier.
It’s a smart and lively confection, and part of the fun is seeing the Strawdog regulars switch between so many roles. Michaela Petro and Anderson Lawfer pop up as two of the vocally challenged stars in May’s elocution scheme, and then as electricians with showbiz dreams of their own. Sarah Goeden plays Susan, the would-be ingenue whose dreams are bigger than her brains — which of course makes her the perfect mate for Danielson’s clueless George.
Strawdog isn’t finished as a company — it’s moving north to Howard Street next season to share Factory Theater’s new digs. But Kiely’s “Once in a Lifetime” ends with a defiant and more-than-a-little poignant ensemble rendition of Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.” It’s a clever tip of the hat to both the inevitability of stars reinventing themselves to keep up with current tastes and to the imminent fate of the shabby-but-cozy space where the company has worked more than a few theatrical miracles over the past decades.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
3.5 STARS
When: Through June 11
Where: Strawdog Theatre Company, 3829 N. Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Tickets: $28-$30 at 866-811-4111 or www.strawdog.org
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