Revived Civic does 'Front Page' brisk, funny

• by Christopher Potter--Ann Arbor News, Friday, March 9, 2001

  • What's odd about the "The Front Page" - presented in a
    mostly triumphant revival by the newly refurbished Ann
    Arbor Civic Theatre - are the morose underpinnings to this
    classic Chicago newspaper romp.
    
    If a more somber, crusading playwright (Elmer Rice,
    perhaps?) had penned this 1928 show insstead of comic
    cut-ups Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, he would have
    all the elements of stage tragedy. A young and idealistic
    leftist, Earl Williams, is painted as a Bolshevik, unjustly
    convicted of murdering a Chicago cop, makes his escape
    the eve of his execution, then finds no one to turn to save
    his pseudo-girlfriend Mollie Malloy, branded by society as
    a lush and worse.
    
    "The Front Page" teems with cynical newspapermen only
    too happy to condemn this young loner as symbolic of the
    Red Threat to America and to Chicago in particular. Noble
    Mollie leaps from a window to divert attention from the
    hidden Earl - and gets no sympathy from reporters, whose
    only reaction is that her rash act will juice up their
    prison-break stories. As for the law, it's wholly corrupt,
    from the mayor and the Cook County sheriff on down.
    
    So what did Hecht and MacArthur do with all this grim
    grist? Mostly they just went with the flow. Maybe the world
    is lousy, rotten and unjust, but what're ya gonna do? Don't
    take it serious, life's too mysterious.
    
    The result is one of the funniest comedies in Broadway
    history, brought rousingly to life by Civic director Glenn
    Bugala and a large, enthusiastic cadre of actors at the old
    Performance Network site.
    
    Bugala's boozy, lazy press-room journalists are a
    laughably lame lot, sharing a sardonic camaraderie any of
    them would drop in an instant if he thinks he can jump his
    colleagues on a scoop. Even Hildy Johnson (played by
    Carl Hanna), ace reporter, is as nefarious as any of his
    mates, albeit smarter. Ditto Hildy's managing editor Walter
    Burns (Charles Sutherland), a grandiose tyrant who'll do
    anything to stop his popular writer from quitting the
    Examiner to marry snooty New York society heiress
    Peggy Grant (Emily Phenix).
    
    "The Front Page" is rough, raw, and fast, and Bugala
    pushes these elements to the hilt. Overlapping lines,
    wisecracks and action fly by in the slam-bang mode of
    Warner Bros. gangster flicks. The Fifth-Estate scribes
    manage to create a wholly naturalistic atmosphere even as
    when they behave like caricatures with their noisy
    posturing and often outright buffoonery.
    
    It all works, beautifully. There are countless choice
    moments, such as Larry Rusinsky's reporter McCue
    zipping up after vacating the men's room, wiping his hands
    on his trousers, then making sure they're clean by draping
    them over the shoulders of a pompous,
    would-be-criminologist cop (Brian Harcourt as a moronic
    know-it-all). Rusinsky also proves a master of fast-talking,
    shouting his reporter's notes into a phone with such speed
    you could imagine the poor, absentee newsroom schnook
    forced to take down this gabble.
    
    Andrew Hoag seemed almost a guru of inertia as
    guitar-strumming Kruger, and Ron Apsey a cartoon of
    wimpy fastidiousness as neat-freak reporter Bensinger.
    
    Tom Beverly embodied graft and powrerful threat as
    Chicago's corpulent mayor (Hecht and MacArthur's savage
    send-up of true-life mayor Big Bill Thompson). Beverly
    threw his weight around with graceful menace in a play rife
    with body English (though I doubt a mayor running for
    re-election on an anti-Communist platform would wear a
    European-cut goatee).
    
    Bugala ought to tell Todd St. George to tone his act down
    as the mayor's flunky, Sheriff Hartman. St. George crosses
    the line from satire to cartoonish farce: While the Sheriff
    isn't the sharpest tool in the woodshed, playing him as a
    total nincompoop robs his scenes of much of their humor.
    
    Phenix gets it just right as spoiled-brat Peggy, who we
    know would spell total disaster for prospective hubby Hildy.
    (That's why we root for Walter even if we don't like him.)
    Top acting honors go to Laurie Greig Atwood as Peggy's
    perpetually outraged mother, whose misadventures
    steadily escalate in bizarreness. At the other end of the
    spectrum, Michael Roehrig and Laurel Hufano share
    genuinely tender moments as fugitive Earl and lovin' Mollie.
    Wonderful Jimmy Dee Arnold, stuck in yet another small
    (though crucial) role, shines as always.
    
    Sutherland seemed slightly out of sorts as Walter,
    occasionally flubbing lines and rushing his dialogue to the
    point where he'd often lose his normal clipped enunciation.
    But Hanna is a marvel as Hildy, debonair as Fred Astaire
    and as menacing (when the situation requires it) as George
    Raft. Watch Hanna enjoy an actor's field day while holding
    simultaneous phone conversations - ever so sweet to
    Peggy, scorchingly acidic to Walter. One really sensed the
    old press room would never be the same without Hildy's
    mercurial presence.
    
    Said press room, designed by Bugala, looks appropriately
    dingy, and is also wonderfully close to the audience. The
    former-Network playing space is ideal for the play, turning
    "The Front Page" into an in-your-face show literally as well
    as metaphorically. Welcome back, Civic. We've missed
    you.
    
    "The Front Page" runs Friday-Sunday March 9-11 and
    Thursday-Sunday March 15-18 at the former Performance
    Network theater at 408 W. Washington St. Curtain is 8
    p.m. Thurday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. For ticket prices
    and reservations call (734) 971-2228..