THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409220053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater review
SOURCE: BY MONTAGUE GAMMON III, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
``POLISHED'' IS the word that springs immediately to mind when watching ``The Good Doctor,'' as produced by the Actors' Theatre. Slick and smooth are other first impressions, and hard on their heels comes funny.
Only that last adjective describes a quality which exists other than superficially. This play is the light diversion one would expect from Neil Simon, even when he mines Chekhov for his raw material. It's undemanding entertainment, certainly not unintelligent but not particularly rich in comic nuance.
This isn't to say there is no content worthy of attention. Anyone who has ever wished to retract a remark or correct an embarrassment will identify with the poor bureaucrat who bespatters a high-ranking officer and administrator in a scene called ``The Sneeze.'' The segment called ``A Quiet War'' looks with a warm-hearted poignancy at the bleakness of enforced idleness.
There is throughout a tone of deepest affection for foolish humanity, whose very human qualities carry with them the inevitability of folly.
The show is made up of nine sketches drawn from short stories of Anton Chekhov, plus a narrative prologue and epilogue.
Seven actors play 23 roles, but there are really only a dozen or so characters. The general's wife in the second skit is quite like the prostitute in a later episode, the general himself resembles the policeman in Act 2, the medical student is close kin to both the sailor and the banking assistant and so forth.
Joe Harrell plays the narrating author. Once he breaks free of the pronounced rhythmical patterns with which he delivers almost every sentence in Act 1, his character comes across as a sympathetic man of gently ironic wit who can tolerate almost any foible that is not malevolent.
The rest of the cast forms something like a stock company. Jim Luker is the mature character actor and Lydia Girarden the character actress. Tom Story is the clown and Adam Jones the clean-cut young man. Tony Hale is the young comic lead and Megan Jones the leading lady. Harrell steps in twice in character roles.
That overview is also something of an oversimplification, especially where Hale and Megan Jones are concerned. Though he appears in three scenes and she in four, each acts with a sense of detail and texture that sets up truly interesting variations among the several characters each plays.
Story's rendition of two particularly hapless souls introduces slapstick that is close to inspired. As the unfortunate recipient of ham-fisted dental care, and as a gout-ridden bank manager plagued by an obsessive complainer, he raises the depiction of pain and suffering to a comic high point.
Adam Jones plays the foil to other comic characters without losing sight of his own character's identity, which is no easy task. Luker is at his best in ``A Quiet War,'' in which he blends mannered haughtiness with a sympathetic eccentricity.
Lydia Girarden shows that she can play characters who are hard-edged or kind or a combination of the two. She could be a credible straight actress too, as a passage from ``Three Sisters'' reveals.
The program mentions that this is Keith Flippen's directorial debut. He shows more than promise in the quality of performances he has coaxed from his actors and in the unified feel that the whole show projects. Yet his characters seem terribly reluctant to move either toward or away from the audience. Instead, their motions are predominantly toward one or the other side of the stage, almost as if they were on rails like old-fashioned scenery.
Flippen also designed the simple set, a serviceable arrangement of unobtrusive platforms effectively decorated with white drapes in the background. by CNB