THEATER
The Games Are Afoot
Nominations open for annual event fêting queer, allied NYers
BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE
If you’re looking for a delightful,
light-as-air respite from
your cares, by all means head
on over to the Irish Rep where
the rollicking revival of “London
Assurance” will provide two-plus
hours of guaranteed diversion, delivered
with good humor and loads
of charm. Sure, Dion Boucicault’s
1841 drawing room comedy is as
creaky and predictable as it gets,
but the familiar is very, very funny
under Charlotte Moore’s sprightly
direction.
The plot is as worn as an old
glove. If the dewy ingenue Grace
Harkaway doesn’t take the vain
and over-rouged sexagenarian Sir
Harcourt Courtly to be her lawfully
wedded spouse in short order,
she’ll be out the inheritance, which
will go to Sir Courtly’s son, Charles.
While Grace is willing to sacrifice
herself for her family’s solvency,
a sly young bounder known only
as Dazzle arranges for Grace to
meet Charles, disguised of course
so as not to be recognized by his
father, and the two fall in love at
first sight. Meanwhile Sir Harcourt
falls hard for the married Lady Gay
Spanker, so Dazzle devises stratagems
to entangle Sir Harcourt,
match up Charles and Grace, and
generally wreak emotional havoc
over a weekend in the country. It’s
all completely idiotic, which is why
it’s so much fun, and, though the
play was written in the early Victorian
era, it really is much more
in the vein of a classic Restoration
comedy. Making virtually no demands
on the audience and played
unabashedly for laughs, this production
is a welcome midwinter
escape.
The company is clearly having
as marvelous a time as the audience.
Colin McPhillamy is hilarious
as the self-satisfied and deluded
Sir Harcourt. Ian Holcomb
is endearing and appropriately
ridiculous as the smitten Charles.
Craig Wesley Divino is great as
the penniless trickster one often
finds in these tales, who befriends
Charles while the young noble is
Evan Zes and Ian Holcomb in Dion Boucicault’s “London Assurance,” directed by Charlotte Moore, at the
Irish Rep through February 9.
drunk and works his way into the
center of the shenanigans. Rachel
Pickup takes huge bites out of the
scenery as Lady Gay Spanker in a
truly inspired comic turn — and
CAROL ROSEGG
then goes happily back for seconds
and thirds — as she joins the plot
to fool Sir Harcourt and let young
love flourish. The rest of the cast
amplifies the hijinks admirably,
notably Meg Hennessy as Pert, the
worldly wise maid who’s also complicit
in the tricks, and Evan Zes
as Mark Meddle, the lawyer looking
to sue at the drop of a pun. (Of
which there is a bountiful supply.
It’s that kind of a script.)
All of this is done on the crammed
and compact stage of the Irish Rep
with a sumptuous production that
includes period costumes by Sara
Jean Tosetti, terrific scenery by
James Noone, and lighting by Michael
Gottlieb.
Director Moore has thrown herself
— and her company — into this
simply to entertain. And they do.
There’s never any doubt from the
outset with the stereotypical characters
and predictable plot where
this is headed, but that’s part of
the fun, too. After all if you’re going
to all the effort of reviving a chestnut
like “London Assurance,” the
only way to go is to embrace the
nuttiness.
Two charming performances
and a couple of spooky effects
are not sufficient to flesh out
Lucas Hnath’s new play, “The
Thin Place” into anything more
than a half-told, rambling tale of
the supernatural. It is, if you will,
a shaggy ghost story.
The thin place of the title is that
supposed line between worlds
through which the living and the
dead can pass and can sometimes
communicate. The play opens with
Hilda sitting in one of a pair of
wingchairs and sipping tea on an
otherwise bare stage. Hilda talks
about her departed grandmother
whom she loved, how she’s seeing
her everywhere these days, and
how when she was alive and Hilda
was a girl her grandmother tried
to prepare Hilda to communicate
with her after death.
At some point a psychic named
Linda enters and proceeds to chat
with Hilda about that grandmother
on the other side, later telling
her own story, and finally admitting
that despite saying she’s a
“real psychic” most of what she
➤ THE THIN PLACE, continued on p.33
January 16 - January 2 32 9, 2020 | GayCityNews.com
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