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Moonlight and Magnolias (2007) >
Calaveras Enterprise|Amador Ledger Dispatch
1939 Hollywood is abuzz. Legendary producer David O. Selznick has shut down production of his new epic, Gone with the Wind, a film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel. The screenplay, you see, just doesn’t work. So what’s an all-powerful movie mogul to do? While fending off the film’s stars, gossip columnists and his own father-in-law, Selznick sends a car for famed screenwriter Ben Hecht and pulls formidable director Victor Fleming from the set of The Wizard of Oz. Summoning both to his office, he locks the doors, closes the shades, and on a diet of bananas and peanuts, the three men labor over five days to fashion a screenplay that will become the blueprint for one of the most successful and beloved films of all time. "Frankly, my dear, this is one funny play - a rip-roaring farce [with] witty, pointed dialogue and hilarious situations" - NY Daily News.
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Calaveras Enterprise
Main Street’s ‘Moonlight’ is on the money
By Mike Taylor, Calaveras Enterprise
(10.26.07) When artistic directors get wind of a hot new title - or even a
tried-and-true favorite - there can be lines around the block seen as
they wait for the right moment to produce the winning play.
Such was partly the case for Main Street Theatre Works in Sutter Creek,
which opened Ron Hutchinson’s endearing comedy "Moonlight and Magnolias"
last weekend. Sierra Repertory Theatre staged the shenanigans
surrounding the script for "Gone With the Wind" earlier this year, and
the Main Street folks were lucky enough to capture the rights to perform
the show this fall.
Theater snobs might turn up their noses at the ultimately broad approach
Hutchinson takes to his characters, but audiences ready for a
laughter-filled night out will be entertained throughout the show. It
opens as producer David O. Selznick (Bob De Lucia) has shut down
production on "Wind," and he’s rambling through Margaret Mitchell’s
novel trying to talk script doctor Ben Hecht (Philip Pittman) into
helping him salvage what he thinks is a lousy treatment of the tome. The
trouble - at least for Selznick - is that Hecht is one of few folks in
1939 who hasn’t read the book.
This play is partly a fun-loving homage to the Hollywood of yesteryear -
where artists were bossed around by solitary bigwigs, sent from project
to project like so many chess pieces on a celluloid board - and partly a
discussion on race relations in pre-World War II America. Much time is
devoted to whether or not Selznick should include Scarlett O’Hara’s slap
of the child slave, Prissy (Hecht calls it "child abuse"), and while
it’s a funny scene, it’s also an interestingly wrought discussion.
As soon as Hecht agrees to help, Victor Fleming (Allen Pontes) storms
into Selznick’s office. (I should note Hutchinson gives Pontes one of
the best opening lines an actor could hope to deliver, and he really
kicks it with a bustle and stogie.) Selznick has pulled Fleming off of
"The Wizard of Oz" to helm "Wind," because he canned George Cukor.
Once Fleming steps in, he and Selznick must act out the novel for the
writer so Hecht has dialogue to draw from. These playacting moments are
the meat and potatoes on the comedy smorgasbord that is this play.
Act II shows us what happens to people when they are sleep deprived,
angry and full of ego, as the heretofore genial conversations get testy.
Fleming can’t abide the machinations of the ultra-liberal Hecht; Hecht
can’t tolerate Selznick’s indecision on pertinent issues, nor Fleming’s
cavalier attitude; and Selznick wants the hired hands to simply get to
work and finish the script so he quits hemorrhaging $50,000 a day.
Things might be more abrupt in tone, but the laughs keep coming, and
Pontes again leaves the audience in stitches as he fights with a banana
during the beginning of the second stanza. Selznick has decreed bananas
and peanuts "brain food," so that’s all he allows his secretary, Miss
Poppenghul (Carol Sethre), to bring into his office while the trio is
sequestered.
De Lucia gives Selznick heart at just the right moments and he’s an
enraged bull when his high-priced talent gives him gruff. Pontes has
Fleming pegged, so much so that by the time he utters a few lines while
doing his best Clark Gable, the audience expects no less than
tear-jerking hilarity to come from his mouth. It does, over and over.
Pittman is the surprise here. At first - right from the opening scene -
I was afraid he was playing Hecht as a mouse, but he doesn’t. When the
writer’s hackles get raised, Pittman curls his lip and scowls with
devoted delight. That’s another winning aspect of this play, even when
the boys are screaming at each other, they’re aware of each others’
opinions and positions; it’s as if each knows the responses he’s going
to get before comments fly.
The simple Susan McCandless set suggests art deco in some accessories
and light fixtures, but there’s some furniture from today on stage.
That’s OK if it was a time crunch - theater groups are always looking
for that "extra something" - but the plastic trashcan behind Selznick’s
desk seemed too out of place.
Another peccadillo was the food this time around, though that’s not
exactly the fault of the players. The caterer served a hearty stew that
tasted fine, but for the money (dinner tickets are $39 apiece), I’d
think a feast fitting a studio executive would be warranted.
Yes, these are mere quibbles with a production that features three men
having a blast while giving much glee to the audience. Despite the fact
that this is the second time I’ve seen this show in six months, I still
laughed out loud throughout.
Considering this is the second chance you’re being given in a year to
see "Moonlight and Magnolias" in the Mother Lode, you might want to
catch it before Atlanta is razed.
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Amador Ledger-Dispatch
MSTW's 'Moonlight and Magnolias' puts crowd in stitches
By Scott Thomas Anderson, Amador Ledger-Dispatch
(10.24.07)
Main Street Theatre Works is capping its Elly award-winning season with a truly inspired comedy that may even have audiences falling out of their dinner chairs from its barrage of non-stop laughs.
"Moonlight and Magnolias" is Ron Hutchinson's frantic imagining of what could have happened behind closed studio doors in 1939 when famed film producer David O. Selznick, director Victor Fleming and the shadowy script-doctor Ben Hecht created a new, and last-minute, film adaptation of "Gone with the Wind."
Actor Bob De Lucia is nothing less than a human whirlwind as Selznick. In life, Selznick was viewed as a maniacal control freak; yet De Lucia's take on the man is softened and endearing, transforming the Hollywood legend from an obsessive tyrant into a complex dreamer - a virtual howitzer gun of creative enthusiasm.
By any measure Selznick's foot-stomping personality, real or imagined, was a director and screen writer's worst enemy, but again Hutchinson's script dips into the actual Selznick to correctly identify why: The formidable producer's determination to keep every film true to the book that inspired it made him one of the greatest champions of authors in cinematic history (and alienated him from top directors, including Alfred Hitchcock). In "Moonlight and Magnolias," the conflict comes when Selznick, who's now so lost in the world of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" that he can't see his way out of it, discovers the writer he's counting on to rescue his script hasn't even read her book.
Philip Pittman has excellent timing and presence as Ben Hecht, the waylaid screen-writer forced to work on a story he doesn't know or care about. The play is funny from the start, as Selznick begins to act out every scene from "Gone with the Wind" for Hecht, fumbling, stumbling and brimming over the top with the melodramatic ecstasy of his vision. With each new stage of De Lucia's slap-stick rendition, Hecht questions, quite hilariously, the moral implications of glorifying the old South. He also mocks the logic and craftsmanship Mitchell displayed in writing her now-lionized book about a debutante who will "never be hungry again." When Selznick gets to the scene where Scarlett O'Hara slaps her young female slave for not really knowing how to "birth a baby," Hecht jumps up and screams, "Our adulterous, two-timing heroine is now about to add child abuse to her resume!"
Soon the brash, cigar-chomping director Victor Fleming is pulled off "The Wizard of Oz" to referee the creative battle between Selznick and Hecht. This happens early, with the appearance of Allen Pontes as Fleming rounding off what's essentially a three-man ensemble for the rest of the production.
Pontes is good from start to finish, though he shows a knack for physical comedy in the second half of the play that's guaranteed to have the audience laughing harder than they ever expected.
Time and again De Lucia, Pittman and Pontes manage to steal the comedic lime-light from one another in a way that makes for an unpredictable show. Just when the crowd thinks they can sense where the three's dynamic is going, it's usually mixed up by an interruption from Selznick's secretary, Miss Poppenghul (played flawlessly by actress Carol Sethre).
This reviewer was glad to see MSTW end its season with a script so full of cerebral parody, harsh irreverence and unapologetic, non-politically correct humor. Director Susan McCandless and her crew have put together an outstanding production that's indeed edgy - a perfectly designed laugh-fest that's somewhat uncomfortable in a really good way.
"Moonlight and Magnolias" is a dinner theater playing at the Days Inn in Sutter Creek Friday and Saturday nights until Nov. 17. Tickets are $39. There will be three Sunday matinees Oct. 28, Nov. 4 and Nov. 11. Tickets for lunch matinees are $28. All ticket prices include the meal, beverage, dessert, tax, tip and the show. Tickets are available at Lizzie Ann's/Bubblegum Books at 59 Main St., Sutter Creek, and can also be purchased by phone at 276-5680 between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.mstw.org.
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Credits for Moonlight and Magnolias
THE CAST
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THE CREW
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SPECIAL THANKS
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