Playwright: Dylan Costello
At: Giant Cherry/Glitterati
Productions at Theater Wit,
1229 W. Belmont Ave.
Tickets: 773-975-8150;
www.theaterwit.org; $30-$40
Runs through: March 29
The contractual restrictions exercised by the studios over not only the careers, but the private lives, of its employees in the early days of the United States film industry is nowadays universally acknowledged. High-profile cinema celebrities were required by their employers to sign an agreement promising to behave in accordance with moral standards of the time. They might also be encouraged to supply proof of these lifestyles by means of fabricated liaisons, arranged marriages and even offspring—all designed to fuel the fantasies of consumers eager to share in the "secret lives" of their favorites.
Reforms in labor negotiations, coupled with more sophisticated audiences, have rendered these draconian practices virtually non-existent nowadays, but the old myths linger on—especially those encompassing elements of classical romantic fiction. What could be more logical, then, than a story of thwarted love incorporating the historical details of those repressive times, recounted in the very style of the period under scrutiny?
Audiences prepared for campy mock-melodrama are advised to leave their Joan Crawford pumps at home, though—Dylan Costello didn't cross the Atlantic to write that kind of play. Instead, his story begins in 1989, with the arrival at former screen idol Patrick Glass' Hollywood Hills mansion of a young immigrant woman, hired by son George to serve as caregiver to his now-retired father. George's creepy advances on the new servant at first lead us to anticipate gothic-noir antics, but papa Glass turns out to be a sensible, if reclusive, geezer, who will not tolerate bullies in his house. As we become privy to his memories, enacted in flashback, we learn how 40 years earlier, his future, along with that of box-office star Jackson Harper and girl-pal Candice Carlyle, were manipulated and ultimately destroyed by the machinations of greedy producers and self-serving gossip columnists.
Costello's script mandates characters bordering on comic-book proportions undergoing abrupt reversals in service of the plot, as well as an unlikely cameo by a volume of Dickens' Great Expectations, hinting at a lovers' reunion. What elevates this material above the genre it mimics, however, is the author's message of hope arising from lessons rooted in the suffering of past martyrs—a manifesto amplified by John Nasca's crisp direction of actors embracing their surprisingly articulate dialogue with unhurried ease, assisted by Robert Hornbostel's museum-accurate score of incidental music displaying just the right amount of schmaltz to bring us to the happy ending demanded of movies in an age of illusion forged from the blood and tears of those charged with its preservation.
