A fresh cast of mostly classmen made this year’s spring comedy, “The Man Who Came to Dinner” a refreshing, energetic show. Though it started off rocky (and late), the audience that gathered in the auditorium on Thursday, May 31 and Friday, June 1 found itself laughing and crying along with sophomores Jos Diaz and JJ Russo’s directorial effort.
“The Man Who Came to Dinner,” written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, is set in the 1930s and follows celebrity radio personality Sheldon Whiteside (senior Frank Green) as he spends several weeks in the Stanley household in Mesalia, Ohio. Famous for his wit, Whiteside is disgusted with the small town of Mesalia and its gawking, star-struck inhabitants. At the start of the play, he suffers a fall on the front steps of the Stanley home, and, confined in a wheelchair, is forced to recuperate there for the next 10 days. When Whiteside’s long-time secretary, Maggie Cutler (freshman Valeriya Tsitron), falls in love with Bert Jefferson (senior Kevin Hu), a local newspaperman and aspiring playwright, Whiteside comes up with an outlandish scheme to pull the lovebirds apart, introducing, in the process, a plethora of eccentric characters.
Whiteside’s character ties together all three acts of the play, and Green executed his character’s witty lines with perfect comedic timing. He pulled the show together when it tended to fall apart. When actors flubbed their lines and missed their cues, he expertly—but noticeably—adlibbed. Green also provided cues for the tech and sound crews, even ad-libbing “The doorbell hasn’t rung in a while” when the sound crew missed its cue. Tsitron said, “Frank is really the glue that holds us all together. [He] knows all of our lines.”
Tsitron played the intelligent and independent Maggie Cutler, the only character who truly understands Whiteside and can match his biting humor while still coming across as innocent and empathetic. In one particular scene, Maggie has to face the mattress-hopping diva Lorraine Sheldon (freshman Kendra Miller-Rosenberg), whom Whiteside employs to distract Jefferson from Maggie. When Maggie tries to drive Ms. Sheldon out of town unsuccessfully, she bursts into tears and runs offstage in one of the more touching scenes of the show.
Hu, who played Maggie’s love interest, had a believable and comic performance. When Jefferson gets the good news that Ms. Sheldon will appear in his attempt at a play, he comes into the Stanleys’ living room drunk. Hu’s slurred sentences and physical mannerisms, though somewhat over the top, had the audience in hysterics. The chemistry between Hu and Tsitron is somewhat stiff but the superb actors provide two of the more consistent personalities in the play.
Miller-Rosenberg was quite comfortable on stage as Ms. Sheldon and although she was, at times, rather loud (in the scene where she hears that a wealthy English lord has proposed to her, only to realize that it was an elaborate trick, she gets hysterical), she is quite funny and really knows her character well.
Aside from the main characters, the play also provides a platform for a number of scene-stealing minor roles, which leads to even more chaos in the Stanley household. After recovering from his fall, Whiteside bribes the persistent and gullible Dr. Bradley (sophomore Robert Stevenson) to keep his secret (even though Whiteside no longer needs a wheelchair, he is determined to stay and split up Maggie and Jefferson) with the promise that Bradley will help him revise his book, “Forty Years An Ohio Doctor.” Stevenson pops in occasionally to ask about the book, creating a comically awkward Bradley.
Freshman Nisa Beceriklisoy embodied the scampering, sniveling Nurse Preen. At the beginning, she was somewhat predictable as she ran off in tears whenever Whiteside insulted her, but by the end, Ms. Preen’s character really came together. At the conclusion, Ms. Preen dramatically quits the nursing business after nursing Whiteside to health to work in a munitions factory. In this rare moment in which Ms. Preen is not running off and crying, Beceriklisoy was extremely funny and moving.
Whiteside’s eccentric celebrity friends Banjo (junior Billy Ferrer) and Beverly Carlton (senior Alex Kitaydgorodskiy) provided comic relief when the plot became taxing. Ferrer, who experienced some wardrobe malfunctions with his mustache on Thursday night, was crude, insulting and entertaining as a Hollywood film director. Kitaydgoroskiy’s character was extremely witty, despite his unclear delivery due to his unrecognizable accent.
The set and costumes reflect the 1930s well. Small touches like a vintage Singer sewing machine and old-fashioned telephones added immensely to the ambiance. However, some of the name-dropping and jokes about ’30s personalities (Whiteside is presented with penguins from the admiral Richard E. Byrd, and the actress Katharine Cornell is mentioned a few times as Sheldon’s competition) were lost on the young audience. Overall, the play translated well for the modern audience, and the entire crowd burst out laughing several times. “The fact that the play is set in the thirties makes the show unique,” said Diaz. “It gives it a very specific and comfortable old-fashioned American humor.”
In a surprising contrast to recent years, the cast of this year’s spring comedy consisted mostly of underclassmen. “This year’s senior class really did not take the spring comedy to heart,” said Hu. According to Hu, the One-Acts Festival, held in the library on Monday, June 4 and Tuesday, June 5, is usually a chance for underclassmen to get involved in the Stuyvesant Theater Community, while the Spring Comedy is typically dominated by upperclassmen. This time, however, “seniors who want to do theater but have time commitment issues are doing the one-acts,” said Hu. The presence of so many underclassmen added excitement and energy to the production.
Russo and Diaz did a fine job directing. They put the play together almost at the last minute since they did not have many lengthy rehearsals. Moreover, they had not been given many of the props (including Whiteside’s wheelchair) until the day before the performance. Some props, like the mummy’s tomb that appeared in the last act, were used for the first time on Thursday evening. In fact, Thursday evening’s show was the first time they had run through the play in its entirety. “Spring comedies are especially difficult to put on because of the overlap between the play and APs, SAT IIs and just general end-of-the-year-ness,” said Diaz.
Though some of the scenes near the end were a little rough, with under-rehearsed technical aspects, the overall performance was indeed a laugh-out-loud comedy.