Audio By Carbonatix
Beneath a thin (yet sturdy) veneer of respectability lies a nasty little secret at Ravenscroft manor. And when the handsome young footman of the house dies suddenly, falling to his death down the main stairway, it looks suspiciously like murder. The five women of the house claim his death is an accident–and when Inspector John Ruffing investigates, he realizes soon enough that every one of them is lying. Hunger Artists’ production of Don Nigro’s Ravenscroft at the University of Denver is a delightfully convoluted mystery that may be short on substance but is long on clever banter and sharp characterizations.
Director Robert Burns Brown has a knack for period pieces: His lusty version of Corneille’s Illusion last summer was a seventeenth-century treat. Set in an English country house in 1905, Ravenscroft draws much of its humor from assumptions about that prim era. And once again, Brown delights in adding period details through costumes and set design as well as through his actors’ subtle refinements of movement. Each member of this cast moves with his or her own distinctive style, but all in keeping with the age.
Dolly the maid bounces about the stage like a rubber ball, while the young, mentally ill Gillian seems to float and flit everywhere. Mrs. Ravenscroft, a respectable widow, surrounds herself with a cloud of quiet dignity and walks on eggs. The governess, Marcy, moves gracefully but purposefully, as if determined to remain rooted to the world, while the cook, an Irish lady named Mrs. French, bustles busily and then alights with singular stillness. Among these women and their guilty secret, Inspector Ruffing paces and weaves (he gets drunk in the second act), trying to trace a path through the bald lies to the truth.
The truth, however, is a tad embarrassing, and the women will do anything they can to avoid revealing it. Some would rather send an innocent woman to jail than see a public airing of their dirty family laundry.
Don Nigro’s classy contemporary script mocks Victorian modesty, mores and hypocrisy (murder and adultery are one thing, the inspector observes at one point, but rudeness is something else), along with the presumptions of patriarchal power. Though the inspector eventually gets to the bottom of the mystery, the women keep him bamboozled through most of the play. When he finally does uncover the truth, it’s because the women figure out that letting him in on it will actually keep their secret from the world.
Nigro peppers his comedy with a variety of observations about the ambiguity of life and even about the nature of theatrical performances (purgatory is all about rehearsal–trying to set right what is wrong). But these ideas are there to lend texture rather than depth to an inherently shallow form. What makes them all hang together so well in the end is the fine ensemble cast.
Guy Williams as the inspector appears young for the role but plays the part with such ease and skill you soon forget his youthful looks. His accent is impeccable, his cool distance and growing exasperation as his character is thwarted a pleasure to behold. Lisa Marie Mumpton as the slowly melting governess pinches her lines with graceful, troubled defiance. She’s the complete opposite of Cody Hamilton Alexander’s devious, libidinous yet ladylike Mrs. Ravenscroft. Alexander plays her character as a polite spider, waiting to gracefully suck up the lifeblood of any male who falls in her web.
Antonia Freeland as the fiery Mrs. French does a terrific Irish accent and provides artistic ballast for the show’s weird little flights of fantasy. Tonya L. Faller as Gillian and Lisa Tapply as Dolly give the two young girls enough sweet complexity to establish some degree of innocence. All of Nigro’s characters are likable even at their worst because they’re so completely realized.
Drawing-room mysteries like this depend on clever repartee to keep the audience involved. Here director Brown’s splendid timing keeps the repartee ripping and the titters rolling across the audience. There are very few big laughs–the humor is all very smart and restrained. And because the solution to the mystery is a little less predictable than most, Ravenscroft makes for light, but filling, entertainment.