Theatre Three mounts one of Lanford Wilson’s ‘Talley’ Trilogy plays, a romance between unlikable people
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| THE BOATHOUSE WAS THE TIME | A Jewish accountant (Chuck Huber) woos a belle (Shauna McLean) in ‘Talley’s Folly,’ (Photo by Ken Birdsell) |
IT’S SHOWTIME
TALLEY’S FOLLY, presented by Theatre Three, 2900 Routh St. in the Quadrangle.
Through Dec. 20.
It’s tempting to figure that Theatre Three’s production of Talley’s Folly is as good as the play can be — and that’s limiting. It’s a bit of meta-theater, with the protagonist, a Jewish accountant named Matt Friedman (Chuck Huber), informing the audience how long the play will last, what will happen, etc. It’s cute, but to the point of being twee. Maybe that’s just the play.
Only it’s not. Talley’s Folly, which won the gay playwright Lanford Wilson the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, has potential uptapped here. Maybe not greatness, but betterness.
Set in Lebanon, Mo., on a warm summer night at the tail end of World War II, it’s a tentative romance between Matt and the liberal but constricted belle Sally Talley (Shauna McLean). Matt wooed Sally for a week the previous year but things petered out for reasons unknown. Now he’s back, getting all Romeo on her with professions of love at the crumbling boathouse (or "folly") on her family’s estate. And she’ll have none of it.
There’s a pantheon of odd couple, cross-cultural romances to which Talley belongs, but there’s not much to set it apart aside from its specificities of time, place and character. Matt is annoying but also endearing, gabbing excessively. (There’s a sweet musicality to the language, especially when Matt tells about the "little Lit and Let who let a lot.")
What’s never clear is what he sees in Sally, who from the first moment seems shrill and unlikable. Huber does his best to sell the infatuation, but McLean tends to screech too much, and the emotional denouement feels rushed and tacked on.
At least they get to carry on around director-designer Jeffrey Schmidt’s inventive set of strewn paper. Often, though, what’s happening onstage is just boring.
In tone and plot trajectory, Talley resembles As Good As It Gets, another story of two unpleasant lovers trying to negotiate a relationship. And like that film, it suffers from the same sad reality: It only ends happily because it ends here; given a week, a day, a minute, things could turn. That makes for a whole lotta nuthin’.
Holidays on nice — and not-so-nice
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After a big Thanksgiving meal and an exhausting few days of mall shopping, nothing gets the holidays going like a Christmas show, and Dallas has plenty with a snarky gay twist.
The Santaland Diaries is back for the gazillionth (estimated) time — for the second year at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, and once again with Nye Cooper, pictured left, donning pixie shoes to play David Sedaris’ doppelganger, the surly gay department store elf called Crumpet. Cooper has played the part so many times he’s in danger of turning into some weird Carol Channing-Yul Brynner hybrid, but that’s not a complaint — he’s a master of the droll put-down. In the current economic climate, there’s a strong resonance to the story of a man "reduced" to a humiliating job. Thankfully, Santaland shows its twisted dignity. Opens Nov. 27 at Greenville Center for the Arts. ContemporaryTheatreofDallas.com.
There’s very little dignity, but a fair number of laughs, in Mark-Brian Sonna’s Bur-Less-Q Nutcracker, which turns Tchaikovsky on his head … and then sodomizes him. I kid. But it does put Sonna in Capezios as he and a coven of sexy dancers perform a racy version of the classic ballet. Finish your beverage before intermission or prepare to shoot soda out your nose. Open Nov. 27 at the Stone Cottage Theatre. BurlesqueNutcracker.com.
Theatre Britain’s seasonal panto — a traditional English holiday fable suitable for children but with enough double entendre and cross-dressing to tickle the adults, too — returns. This time, it’s Puss in Boots, pictured right. Mark Shum returns as
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the "dame," the man-in-drag comic centerpiece of every panto. At all three performances this weekend, Theatre Britain will give away special edition copies of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with Bumblebee packaging, signed by Mark Ryan, who voices Bumblebee and Jetfire in the films and who got his start performing in pantos in England. Opens Nov. 28 at KD Studio Theatre. Theatre-Britain.com.
Finally, Theatre Three stays busy on its second stage, Theatre Too, with the musical Another Night Before Christmas, co-starring Patty Breckenridge and Marisa Diotalevi, and directed by Terry Dobson. Previews begin Nov. 27. Theatre3Dallas.com.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition November 27, 2009.