Audio By Carbonatix
Think about it: Musicals are absurd. The minimal plots coast along on thin ice and then, suddenly, for no good reason, somebody erupts into song. The music is usually as thin as the plot line, and the characterizations are really about striking appropriate poses. Unless you’re talking about the achievements of comic grand opera, the only real justification for all this silliness is the joie de vivre a given production may embody. And it is unmistakably the joy of life that animates every second of The Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League’s production of Mame. PHAMALy has done it again.
The story by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee concerns a wealthy sophisticate whose whole life is a social whirl–the adorably eccentric Mame Dennis throws cocktail parties every night for the professionally glamorous. Mame’s best buds are all fascinating, and her “bosom buddy” is Broadway star Vera Charles–a lush with a heart of gold.
One night Mame inherits a nephew from her staid older brother, and ten-year-old Patrick instantly becomes the love of the old girl’s erratic life. He arrives with his deceased father’s maid, Agnes Gooch, a goofy, kind-hearted lady with a striking personality and no experience with men. Mame’s sophistication intimidates and then delights her. Mame introduces Patrick to the “Auntie Mame School of Life,” which includes a nudist school, guidance on how to make the perfect martini and exposure to every speak-easy and creative type in the City of New York in the 1920s.
Unfortunately for young Patrick and Mame, though, a banker named Babcock has been named co-guardian of the boy. And when Babcock finds out the kid is learning too much about life and the spawning habits of fish, he sends him off to boarding school, as far from Mame’s influence as possible. Just then, the Great Depression wipes out Mame’s fortune–not good news for a woman whose only talent is being herself. But when Southern millionaire Beau Burnside falls for Mame, the two begin the longest honeymoon in history, traveling the world while young Patrick grows up at prep school. Life is complex for Mame, however, and before the play’s end, she finds herself in the position of having to save her beloved boy from the clutches of a bigoted WASP, just as she discovers one more talent in herself.
Mame has always seemed drearily preoccupied with eccentricity to me. But with Kathleen Traylor as Mame, the focus of the show magically changes: It’s not about mindless eccentricity anymore; it’s about the full-blown embrace of life with all its possibilities. Traylor finally has a role big enough for her talents and her undeniable exuberance. She uses her wheelchair like a roller coaster, dashing about the stage in graceful arcs and singing her heart out. Young Jeremy Palmer is wonderful as young Patrick–utterly at home on stage, he’s a natural-born actor and a glowing presence.
Traylor and Palmer are backed up by a lively cast. James Hubbard blusters with grand style as nasty old Babcock, while Charles Jacobson is positively magnetic as the gracious Beau. Lucy Roucis is hilarious as the ever artful Vera–every sardonic crack is masterfully timed. Angie Aguilar makes the bigoted Mrs. Upson delightfully obnoxious. And as Ito, Mame’s butler, Edward Blackshere makes a fine comic partner for the flamboyant Linda Wirth, who has taken on her funniest, most outrageous role yet in Agnes Gooch.
Director Don Bill has outdone himself with this show, posing his cast in terrific freeze-frames and taking risky choices that pay off big-time: A blind actor stands on a chair to become a Christmas tree, a wildly funny wheelchair tango defies the conventions of dance, and a red dress transforms a frumpy character into a fabulous coquette.
There are moments in this show that elicit long howls of laughter. Nobody’s spirit is held back by physical limitation, and everyone is having so much fun it’s contagious. This Mame is a must-see.
Mame, through August 25 at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, 431-3939.