Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came To Dinner at the Barbican Theatre
“I saw his play at a disadvantage. The curtain was up,” once remarked the famously acerbic George S. Kaufman on watching a drama by Alexander Woollcott.
You may have never heard of Woollcott, an egocentric New York critic turned playwright, but he was later to provide Kaufman with inspiration for the obstinate, irascible Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner.
In this Kaufman-Hart comedy, Whiteside is a Manhattan radio star and critic who falls and injures his hip while visiting the Stanleys of Mesalia, Ohio. Suffice to say this trauma results in the manipulative old grouch being billeted on the family for the Christmas holidays – with disastrous consequences.
To stave off his boredom, Whiteside (John Mahoney) initiates all kinds of mischief. He convinces the daughter of the family to elope with her lover, the son to dash off and explore the world, and turns the family home into a veritable menagerie, with penguins in the study, an octopus in the basement and cockroaches in the kitchen.
Whiteside even plots to prevent long suffering secretary Maggie (Harriet Harris) from marrying her lover Bert Jefferson (Rick Snyder) by playing her off against social butterfly Lorraine Sheldon (Shannon Cochran).
Of course, everything in this delicious farce works out just dandy in the end, and even the old malcontent himself gets his just desserts.
There are some genuinely funny moments, for instance, when camp entertainer Beverly Carlton (Ross Lehman) tinkles the ivories in a Noel Coward pastiche; and whenever the boorish Whiteside is at his tart-tongued best, hurling acid-tipped barbs at all and sundry.
For all the venom and vitriol, though, The Man Who Came To Dinner is a sharp satire on the shallow, decadent mores of the social elite and how they founder when transplanted from their urban milieu into a suburban backwater.
This revival features fine ensemble acting by members of Chicago s renowned Steppenwolf Company, and Whiteside himself is impeccably portrayed by Frasier regular Mahoney (complete with Monty Wooley-style whiskers). Indeed, the actor seems to have slipped seamlessly from his weekly TV role playing the invalid who foists himself on an unwilling family, into playing, well, another invalid who foists himself on an unwilling family.
James Burrows, who has directed Frasier and co-created other popular sitcoms like Cheers and Friends, brings to this production the kind of deft comic touches that make his television work so engaging.
In the wrong hands, this drawing room comedy from the 1930s could easily feel stuffy or dated. But Burrows keeps the atmosphere modern and the laughs so well timed they could be of the canned variety.
Honestly, I can t wait for the mini-series.
Richard Forrest
