MORE ON TOP HAT

posted by James Reel

    James Mitchell Gooden, who runs Top Hat Theatre Club, believes that bad reviews can harm his company more than good reviews can help it, so, as I wrote last week, he is not inviting critics to his latest production (I understand the Star’s Kathleen Allen is also not invited to review the show). But I have spies everywhere, and a friend who attended Top Hat’s production of Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor—an adaptation of Chekhov stories—has reported back. I trust her theater judgment, and she liked what she saw. Here are some of her comments; I won’t reveal her name because I’m quoting without permission:

    If you get a chance I encourage you to see this play at Top Hat. Top Hat has finally hit its stride, after the debacle of Murder at the Vicarage.
    As for discouraging reviewers—James Gooden should have trusted 1) the material; 2) his own talents as a director; 3) his actors. For one thing, this is NOT Neil Simon—this is Chekhov (my favorite playwright, after Mr. W.S.), who can be trusted always to tell us something important about the human condition—and tell it gracefully. Chekhov's irony fits James Gooden's style perfectly—and their sense of timing fits. And on the third point, the actors clearly are enjoying working with material of this quality. …
    Simon has stagecraft, whatever the emptiness of some of his plays and characters, and these playlets are not empty. My favorite of the six is "The Seduction," in which the biter is bitten, the tables are turned by the woman the aspiring seducer underestimates. That is the most Chekhovian of the lot. Still, I am haunted most by "The Audition," with the final lines from the last scene of Three Sisters.
    Maria Fletcher has great fun and does a good job in the last episode—a new tone for her, it shows her range. (Truth to tell, I can imagine Kristi Loera in that role! The rapid changes from victim to termagant—and back—reminded me of Kristi's performance in The Housekeeper. Scary ladies!)