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by Morris Panych & Brenda Robins, directed by Morris Panych

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

September 15-October 7, 2017

Josephine: “Leave the battle.  Get out of this mess”

Now that the Shaw Festival seems to have abandoned exploring plays written during the 94 years of Shaw’s lifetime (1856-1950), it’s good to see that other theatre companies have not given up  delving into that rich mine of largely unknown works.  Soulpepper has had especially good luck with Hungarian plays of the period.  While the Shaw Festival has staged only one play by Ferenc Molnár (1878-1952), The President (1929) in 2008 and 2011, Soulpepper has staged three – The Play’s the Thing (1926) in 1999, 2003 and 2015, Olympia (1928) in 2005 and The Guardsman (1910) in 2009.  Soulpepper has even moved on to one of Molnár’s contemporaries, Miklós László (1903-73) and found a gem of a Christmas play in his Parfumerie (1937) that it first staged in 2009.  Now Soulpepper has taken a look at Melchior Lengyel (1880-1974), who was Molnár’s main rival in the 1920s, and resurrected his play The Battle of Waterloo (A waterloói csata) from 1924 as Picture This.          

A waterloói csata has the potential to be an hilarious comedy.  It is still regularly performed in Hungary and was made into a television movie as recently as 1982.  It is a satire on filmmaking on the order of Once in a Lifetime (1930) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, though it is much more focussed on the human element of the comedy rather than on spectacle.  Lengyel knew about filmmaking first hand since he worked in movies both in Budapest and in Hollywood.  His most famous contributions in Hollywood are the stories for Ninotchka (1939) and To Be or Not to Be (1942), both directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

The main problem with Picture This is not the adaptation by Morris Panych and Brenda Robins itself.  They’ve eliminated numerous characters from the original, like a twin sisters act and diplomats at an international border conference, although the adaptation could be tightened still more.  Rather the problem is the busy, distracting direction of Panych, who has only shown the inklings of the famed “Lubitsch touch” of subtle satire in Parfumerie.  Otherwise, Panych is known more for what could be called his “Michael Bay touch” where too much is never enough.

With the right director the play could be quite amusing.  The first act opens in a grand hotel in Budapest where an émigré Hungarian, Mr. Red (Cliff Saunders), is staying who has now become a Hollywood movie mogul.  Hoping to get jobs in Hollywood, various people from the local film industry have taken over positions in the hotel.  The director Vegh (Nancy Palk) is acting as the concierge.  The would-be film composer Jimmy is acting as a bellboy.  And the actress Milli is acting as a waitress.  The situation is funny enough as it is since the film people neglect their hotel work in their vain efforts of self-promotion around Mr. Red.  Unfortunately, Panych has added innumerable pratfalls and other sorts of slapstick that both cheapen the comedy and often make the action unclear.  

Romberg, a penniless film producer, is hoping that Mr. Red will finance his next project and Milli, his girlfriend, does her best to ingratiate herself with Red.  Complicating matters is the presence of Mr. Brown (David Storch), a fur-salesman from Buffalo and school friend of Mr. Red.  When the two men encounter each other in the hotel lobby, Mr. Red lavishes favours on Brown including paying for him to stay in his hotel suite.  Such deferential treatment causes all the film folk assume that Mr. Brown must be a Hollywood bigwig too.  When Mr. Red leaves town, Romberg and Milli try to convince Brown to invest in Romberg’s film which will be about Napoleon.  The meek Mr. Brown, free for two weeks while his termagant wife Rose (Brigitte Robinson) is away visiting relatives, finally falls for the duo’s plan and invests his entire life savings on condition that the film be finished in two weeks (i.e., before his wife returns).  This leads to potentially hilarious scenes in Act 2 when the film people, now hired but unpaid by Romberg, attempt to film Napoleon’s life story, including the Battle of Waterloo, with so few extras that the same actors have to play soldiers on both sides of the battle.

The problem is that Panych does not have a light touch with material like this that really requires it.  He has Mr. Brown fall down  on the same step at least five times before we learn that Brown can’t see without his glasses.  Panych has characters tripping and falling down in the background even as dialogue is occurring as in Act 2.  For no reason the wardrobe mistress (Brenda Robins) can’t seem to stay upright while we are trying to learn more about the morose actor Boleslav (Robert Persichini) who is playing Napoleon.  Then Panych adds in 1920s-style silent film music to accompany this slapstick, an emphasis that distracts us from whatever issues are being discussed.

Those who have seen numerous plays directed by Panych know he is addicted to beginning his plays with projected credits as if the play were a film.  So it is here with video designer Daniel Malavasi producing very authentic looking silent film credits on streaked and splotched film to precede the action.  After using this technique numerous times when it was inappropriate, at least this once, since Picture This is about the film industry, such an opening sequence has some relevance.  The play, of course, is not a silent film and it is jarring when the actors begin to speak, but at least Panych’s device ties in with the theme.

It is not Lengyel’s fault that the way the crisis of the play resolves itself has since become overused.  Terrible art being taken as brilliant comedy is, after all, the central plot point of Mel Brooks’s film The Producers (1967).  Panych can’t quite make this turnabout feel as surprising as it must have been in 1924, but he does manage to finesse it into an ending where couples get together or reconcile and warm mood, seemingly typical of 1920s Hungarian comedies, begins to take over. 

But then Panych proceeds to ruin it.  In Act 2 we have seen on stage all the mistakes and shenanigans that have gone into making Romberg’s film about Napoleon.  Lengyel has left it to us to imagine what all this chaos must look like on film.  Not so Panych.  Totally unnecessary and completely destroying the mood of the play’s conclusion, Panych shows us what the film looks like projected on a drop-down screen.  Not only is what we imagine much funnier than what Panych has put on film, but it is extraordinarily perverse to end a play with a movie and literally upstage the actors with it. 

As if that were not enough, Panych also has a final shot of Vegh as a director and Konig (Frank Cox-O’Connell) as her cinematographer glide in around the corner on stage left to signify that the play we have been watching has actually been a movie (forgetting, yet again that we are in the period of silent filmmaking).  This might be thought of as clever if postmodernism were still in style and if Panych had not already used this trick before.  When he directed The Government Inspector for Soulpepper in 2006, he finished the show with a director calling out from the back of the theatre to make us realize that what we had seen was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for a play.  By now, does Panych not know we can see how few arrows he has in his quiver?

Although Panych is intent on having physical comedy dominate comedy of character, some fine performances do emerge.  Chief among these is David Storch as Mr. Brown, a meek, henpecked fur-salesman who is easily talked into investing in movies primarily by the sexual allure of Romberg’s girlfriend Milli.  Storch shows great skill at playing embarrassment and acknowledgement of failure while also conveying the notion that Brown may be a mouse but he longs to play if he ever gets the chance. 

Michelle Monteith, who plays neurotic young women so well, finally has the chance to show she can play comedy too.  She is very funny as Milli, particularly when Milli’s clear-sightedness forces her to take over from the babbling men around her.            

In other roles, Robert Persichini is a humorous Boleslav, an actor totally unsuited to the role of Napoleon, who is both grouchy and apathetic about acting until he gets both paid and laid.  Brigitte Robinson in her short appearances as Mrs. Brown is tough and patronizing enough towards her husband that we can see why he might rebel when he gets the chance.  Cliff Saunders plays Mr. Red as an unsubtle blowhard, but that’s exactly what the role calls for.

Otherwise, the adaptation leaves several key roles poorly defined.  How can a strong woman like Nancy Palk’s Vegh descend to playing the concierge just to get some work?  Why is Jordan Pettle’s Romberg, CEO of his own (bankrupt) film company, be so shy about promoting himself to Mr. Red?  And what is the personality of the actor Hudascek as played by Gregory Prest supposed to be?  Is he supposed to be vain or meek?

Ken Macdonald has designed the set for the hotel lobby with all its swoopy Art Nouveau wood trim, to look almost exactly like the set he did for Parfumerie, except in blue instead of pink.  On the other hand, Dana Osborne’s subtler period costumes well indicate the level of wealth of the various characters which is so important in the play. 

There is the kernel of quite an enjoyable play in Picture This if only someone else had co-written the adaptation with Brenda Robins as in the case of Parfumerie, or if someone else had directed.  While Picture This is obviously a satire of the movie business, it is also a story of two parallel love affairs – that of Mr. and Mrs. Brown and that of Milli and Romberg. 

In an irony, typical of Hungarian comedy, the two affairs reach happy endings for opposite reasons.  Brown wins back his wife’s love by asserting himself in the one thing, bargaining, that he does best, while Milli wins Romberg by taking charge of his business.  If Panych had managed to keep the satire and the love stories in balance the play might work.  As it is, it seems too much like a mishmash of poorly organized material.  The first outing of a playwright as unknown here as Melchior Lengyel really deserves better. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photos: (from top) Brenda Robins and Cliff Saunders (foreground) with the ensemble; Michelle Monteith, David Storch and Jordan Pettle; Jordan Pettle, Robert Persichini, Nancy Palk, Frank Cox-O’Connell and Joseph Zita. ©2017 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.ca.