Rose Valley's Hedgerow Theatre Celebrates It's 85th Anniversary With Bernard Slade's An Act Of The Imagination

Theater: Hedgerow Theatre

Show Title: An Act of the Imagination

Opened: October 11, 2007

Seen: October 21, 2007

Reviewer: Karin Suni

Submitted: October 27, 2007

 

Out in Rose Valley, Hedgerow Theatre’s 85^th Anniversary and Signature Series has kicked off with a production of Bernard Slade’s An Act of the Imagination.  This mystery play has so many twists and turns you lose count, and just when you think you have it all figured out, the end leaves your head spinning.  Without giving too much away, the play centers around mystery writer Arthur Putnam and his new racy novel about a married man who has an affair with a younger woman, which is a decided departure from his previous works.  It opens with Putnam awaiting the opinion of his ex-professional tennis player wife Julia on his manuscript.  Her endorsement encourages him to calm any concerns he has that his new editor, Holly Adams, who is due to arrive any moment, may not like the change in genre.  Also in attendance at the house is Putnam’s ne’er-do-well son Simon who is there nursing his wounds from one bad business venture and working on getting money from his father for the next one.  All is going well for the quartet until an unexpected fifth person joins the party.

 

The production stays true to the play’s roots in mystery fiction including audience participation.  Throughout the performance, there’s a sense of having walked into an Agatha Christie novel, though not all of the characters here manage to keep their accents as steadily as natives.  This parlor drama is driven onward by constantly keeping the audience guessing; however, to echo the lament of many mystery buffs, the play itself gives few clues to go on and instead leaves the audience with only its own supposition about what has happened.  If you are looking for a neat and tidy whodunit, this will not serve.  Yet the folks at Hedgerow want the audience to keep at it even though the answers are not simple, so they have a contest during intermission where you can place your guess as to the killer’s identity in a drawing for a prize.  This interactivity drew the entire crowd to the lobby area buzzing with suspicions.  As soon as the lights blacked out for each of the scene changes thereafter, audience members turned to one another to compare notes and bandy around ideas until at times the gentle rumbling nearly turned into a dull roar.  It is rare in a theater to engage an audience to this level and Hedgerow is to be commended for it.

 

Though first produced in 1987, Slade’s play was originally set in 1964, while Hedgerow’s has been updated to 1972, though without much, if any, alteration to the script.  Since there are no allusions that date the piece, this change in time does not hinder the production.  The costumes and set are befitting of an early 1970s English sitting room complete with darkly upholstered chairs and walls so salmon-orange that they nearly sting the eyes after the first few scenes.  While I appreciate the attention to detail in the authenticity of the stage design, I am curious why the director, Janet Kelsey, did not choose to update to a modern time period since the change from 1964 was already being made.  I think some of the stiff and dry nature inherent in British parlor drama could have been softened by having the action take place in the now.

 

Zoran Kovcic, as Arthur Putnam, carries the dry humor of the play nicely and exhibits a multilayered character that at no point feels inauthentic.  Throughout the various twists in the plot, he connects all of Arthur’s faces by a consistent core of character.  Hedgerow’s Producing Artistic Director Penelope Reed, who plays Julia, presents a fine portrait of a proper English wife and has quite a job to do when a sudden revelation to the audience changes her character.  It is a difficult task to play this “before and after” and make it both believable and a surprise to the audience.  While Ms Reed manages to find some balance here, I would have preferred more of a hint and less of a shock.  Anthony Marsala has a similar, though less dramatic, change that he must play as Putnam’s son Simon.  Mr. Marsala puts down enough groundwork in his early scenes that his drastic actions later in the play are not jarring.  In fact, some audience members were so involved in what they thought he was going to do that they spoke out loud to other players on stage.  The cast is rounded out by Barrymore Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Tom McCarthy as Putnam’s friend Detective Sgt. Fred Burchitt who also has a penchant for amateur theatricals; Erika Salomon as editor Holly Adams who sticks by her author no matter what and Alana Gerlach who does double duty by playing both Brenda Simmons and Brooke Carmichael.  Though Ms Gerlach distinguished her two different characters from each other quite well, there were some in the audience who had difficulty at first understanding that her Act Two character was not the same as the one in Act One and that this appearance was not just another twist.

 

One thing to keep in mind about the Theatre is that it is housed in what was an 1840 gristmill.  While this setting is beautiful and certainly unique, I am unsure of disability access and am fairly certain it would be a difficult venture for anyone with serious mobility limitations to navigate all of the stairs.

 

All told, Hedgerow Theatre’s An Act of the Imagination was obviously enjoyed by the audience as witnessed by their vociferous manner both during and after play.  It may not be my kind of show, as I prefer those neat and tidy whodunits, but the enthusiasm of those around me was impossible to ignore.

 

The play runs through November 17^th.