Sunday, April 27, 2003
BY CHRISTOPHER POTTER News Arts Writer

More than a half-century ago theater critic George Jean Nathan wrote of playwright John Patrick: "He knows how to fashion stage shows that float."

This was no small praise given that the acerbic Nathan did not suffer fools - a category to which he banished most playwrights - gladly. And indeed Patrick - whose final play, "The Girls of the Garden Club," opens Thursday at Ann Arbor Civic Theatre Downtown - did write plays that "float."

Patrick's knack for buoyancy not only spanned major successes like his Pulitzer Prize-winning post-World War II comedy "The Teahouse of the August Moon" ("Completely Captivating" - The New York Times) and his wartime-hospital drama "The Hasty Heart." It also encompassed major bombs like "The Curious Savage" (about an elderly woman's triumph over her greedy family), a show that found extended life via innumerable regional and community stage productions.

So it is with "The Girls of the Garden Club," penned in 1979 and which - wonder of wonders! -provides roles for nearly 20 actresses. Or even more, in the case of director Francyn Chomic's Civic production: "I've cast some 30 women in the show," she says, "some of whom will alternate on different nights." Patrick's comedy chronicles the suburban plight of the aptly named Rhoda Greenleaf (Erica Dutton), who loves gardening and the garden club to which she belongs, and who yearns to someday have an atrium-like greenhouse of her own.

Erica's husband, Vincent (Fred Kahle, one of two male actors in the show), doesn't share Rhoda's horticultural dreams, wishing his spouse would pay more attention to him and less to her seedlings. But Rhoda, who dearly loves Vincent but needs green-peaced space of her own, will not be deterred: That's why she's dared to take on her club's longtime president Lillybelle Lamont (Kathleen Beardmore), an upper-class snoot who prefers power to plants, at the group's upcoming election.

In a quest for authenticity, director Chomic recruited much of her 30-plus member cast from members of area garden clubs. "Some of them have never acted before," she says. So she has simply asked them to be themselves, to behave the way they would at meetings.

The cast of "The Girls of the Garden Club" also includes Maggie Hutchens as Rhoda's best friend Cora, and Kent Klausner as our heroine's son Dillson.