Playwright: N. Richard Nash. At: American Blues Theater at the Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-404-7336; www.americanbluestheater.com; $29-$39. Runs through: Sept. 27
You know the story, if only from the musical version or the Katharine Hepburn movie: Lizzie Curry is a bookish young woman who thinks herself homely and, therefore, unlikely to ever marry, despite the encouragement of her father and brothers. One day, a handsome stranger arrives promising to bring an end to the drought afflicting the region during what appears to be the 1930s. After spending a night with him in the barn, doing who-knows-what, Lizzie emerges confident and self-possessed, just in time to confront a hesitant suitor spurred to speak his mind, along with the long-awaited rain.
"Wait! What's wrong with not marrying?" protest hordes of happily single men and women in 2015 as they prepare to dismiss N. Richard Nash's 1954 comedy as sexist, pro-marital, Eisenhower-era propaganda ( a hazard faced by any theater company essaying pre-mid-20th-century plays based in male-female relationships ). Never, though, does Nash claim celibacy to be an invalid lifestyle—for those who embrace it willingly. American Blues director Edward Blatchford clarifies this distinction at the outset by establishing the attraction between Lizzie and File, the sheriff's deputy who denies his feelings for her, leaving them needing only a gentle prod from cupid's arrow to overcome their insecurities. Viewed thusly, the bewitching Starbuck ( who dons his shirt when surprised in his bucolic boudoir by his hostess ) is not the priapal deity associated with the all-she-needs-is-a-good-shtup school of romance fiction, but the trickster of U.S folklore, come to free lovers from their own foolishness.
Persuading jaded theater audiences to believe in the magic of hope, faith and patience is harder than running flimflams on simple country folk, but even as Sarah Ross and Jamie Karas' museum-accurate environment grounds us in our pastoral milieu, the cast resists succumbing to actorly affectation. Steve Key tempers his passages of pagan eloquence with the boyish vulnerability characterizing its new-world counterpart, while Linsey Page Morton's initially clumsy use of her hands contradicts the plucky pertinacity of her archetype.
Vincent Teninty and Matt Pratt exhibit a recognizably fraternal dynamic as bossy Noah and naive Jim Curry, both of whom also learn wisdom as a result of their mysterious mentor's intervention, as does Howie Johnson's phlegmatic File. Finally, Danny Goldring and Robert Breuler, whose combined credits encompass more mileage than it would be tactful to count, lend gravity to a production not quite ready on its opening night—its energy tending to plateau rather than escalate toward the end—but like its personae, poised on the threshold of fulfillment.
